Senior Engineering Manager and Scrum Master
Calbright College

The Position

Title: Senior Engineering Manager and Scrum Master

Position Type: Full time

Requisition No: 22038

Category: Administration

Supervisor: VP of Engineering

Last Updated: February 2022

Job Purpose: Manages the engineers, implementation and agile processes for new software and systems solutions within Calbright College. This will be in close partnership with Product Management and Production Operations teams.

Location: Remote, various locations throughout California

Position Overview

Calbright is growing and working to transform our system design and further mature many of our internal processes (agile SDLC, DevOps, Production Support) to ensure we are on the best footing for future growth. This role will be critical in leading many of these efforts related to our new software development, integrations and new systems deployments.

The Sr. Engineering Manager and Scrum Master will manage the assigned engineers, lead the agile processes, partner closely with the Product team, partner closely with the Production Operations team, strive to set and hit schedule milestones, and oversee both critical software and systems implementation best practices. While a majority of the work will be related to software development and integrations, the implementation of the related underlying systems and platforms are also critical to the role.

Essential Job Duties and Responsibilities

The duties below are representative of the role and are not intended to cover all of the duties performed within the scope of work.

• Foster a team-oriented, inclusive, collaborative, and positive work environment that builds and retains the best talent.
• Manage a team of remote engineers that includes front-end software engineers, back-end software engineers, QA engineers, DevOps and systems engineers. This includes recruiting, ongoing career development, and redundancy planning.
• Be the lead agile evangelist, act as the team's Scrum Master and oversee the implementation and tuning of agile practices within the team. This also includes leading the selection and use of the agile tools. An effective partnership with the Product Management team will be critical for success in the management of the backlog and ensuring timely delivery that meets higher schedule milestones and priorities.
• Ensure that new software and systems solutions are well designed for fault-tolerance, security, data retention and well-instrumented for production support including monitoring, logging, alerting and documentation. An effective partnership with the Production Operations team will be critical for success.
• Ensure engineering best practices are established and followed related to source management, code reviews, architectural reviews, defect management, CI/CD processes, and DevOps processes.
• The VP of Engineering will set high-level guidelines related to systems architecture, agile process goals, team role definitions and production readiness standards.
• Manage external vendors as required.
• Perform other related duties as assigned that support the objective of the position.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• A self-starter with a positive, collaborative and team-orientated attitude that can flex to changing priorities and approaches.
• Strong understanding of agile approaches and related tools including Scrum SDLC best practices.
• Strong understanding of cloud computing as it relates to scaling, security, containerized approaches, logging, monitoring, alerting, and security.
• Strong understanding of modern front-end solutions including mobile, web, single-page apps, and messaging domains.
• Strong understanding of back-end solutions including Web Servers, RESTful and GraphQL APIs, message/queue solutions, serverless architectures, event-driven models, relational database designs, caching platforms, NoSQL approaches, and cloud auto-scaling options.
• Experience working with modern programming languages, frameworks and platforms that are more suitable to small agile teams in a start-up like environment.
• Good understanding of QA, CI/CD and DevOPS practices.
• Experience hiring, ramping and managing remote engineers.
• Demonstrated ability to build close partnerships Product Management, Production Operations, and others outside the engineering team.
• Demonstrated respect, support, and encouragement of diverse and inclusive teams and decision-making.

• Demonstrated understanding of, sensitivity to, and respect for the diverse academic, socio-economic, ethnic, religious, and cultural backgrounds, disability, and sexual orientation of community college students, staff and faculty.

Minimum Qualifications

• At least 6 years of experience as the personnel manager for a team of software engineers and the management of day-to-day engineering work.
• Experience hiring and managing engineers in all of these specialties: QA, DevOps, systems, and software.
• At least 4 solid years of experience leading agile software development as a Scrum Master with good understanding of industry-leading agile tools. Scrum Master certification is strongly preferred.
• At least 2 years of experience implementing production solutions within a more developed cloud ecosystem, including within one of these: AWS, Azure or GCP.
• Strong experience with many of these: RESTful APIs, worker queues, message buses, NoSQL data designs, containerized approaches (e.g., Kubernetes), API gateways, caching platforms, etc.
• Strong hands-on and team leadership experience involving modern programming languages, frameworks and their related platforms (Python, JavaScript, Go, Java, etc.) that are better able to accommodate fast development and smaller teams. For example, with Python this might include AWS API Gateway, AWS Lambda, Django, Flask, Celery, FastAPI, etc.
• Bachelor's degree with a focus in computer science or related field, or an additional two years of relevant training/experience in lieu of this degree.
• Demonstrated ability in supporting diverse and inclusive culture.

Desired Qualifications

• Understand data privacy and security concerns with respect to higher education student data.
• Strategic thinker with strong analytical and quantitative skills.

Working Conditions and Travel

• Calbright College is a statewide online college where all instruction and support are done via various online technologies both in person and remotely. Calbright College has administrative offices in Sacramento available for use. When working remotely, employees should be able and willing to use digital communication tools as used by the college, and have the ability to work on a computer for extended periods of time.
• Regular attendance is considered an essential job function; the inability to meet attendance requirements may preclude the employee from retaining employment.
• The person holding this position is considered a mandated reporter under the California Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act and is required to comply with the requirements set forth in Calbright College policies, procedures, and Title IX.
• Calbright College celebrates all forms of diversity and is deeply committed to fostering an inclusive environment within which students, staff, administrators, and faculty thrive. Individuals interested in advancing Calbright College's strategic diversity goals are strongly encouraged to apply. Reasonable accommodations will be provided for qualified applicants with disabilities who self-disclose.
• Requires the ability to function in a remote online instructional environment performing work of primarily a sedentary nature. Requires the ability to use hearing and speech to make presentations to groups and carry-on conversations over the phone and in-person. Requires speaking skills to communicate with staff and students in one-on-one and small group settings, on the phone, and to distinguish sound prompts from various types of equipment. Requires near visual acuity to read printed materials and computer screens. Requires sufficient hand/arm/finger dexterity to retrieve work materials, operate a personal computer keyboard, and operate standard office equipment. Requires the ability to lift and/or move up to 25 pounds.
• Work is performed indoors where minimal safety considerations exist.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Calbright College provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, age, veteran status, disability or genetics. In addition to federal law requirements, Calbright College complies with applicable state and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment.

Who We Are

Calbright College is one of California's newest community colleges - the first statewide, online campus designed to bridge the gap between employers with unfilled positions and students who don't have either the time or money to attend a traditional school. Our mission is to increase economic mobility and close equity gaps for working adults who lack easy access to traditional forms of higher education by offering online, flexible, affordable skills-based programs that provide tangible economic value for both working adults and hiring managers.