About Geocaching HQ

We are the global headquarters for the game of geocaching. Our apps and Geocaching.com website allow a global community of more than 10 million people to join in a real-world treasure hunt.

Our mission (and yours should you choose to accept it) is to inspire and enable adventure, exploration, and discovery. Basically, everyone’s job here is to enable millions of people to have fun outside. How cool is that? 

Position Overview

This position contributes to Geocaching HQ’s success by leading high performing Agile scrum teams to ensure delivery on commitments on projects ranging from basic platform enhancements to complex community-facing product and feature implementations. The Senior Program Manager works closely with product and cross-functional stakeholders; leads the scrum teams in use of Agile best practices; clears any impediments in the active sprint; and provides status on progress, risks and dependencies across teams. This role will have broad exposure across the organization and visibility of the senior management team.
What You’ll Do
You will be responsible for maintaining multiple Agile product delivery teams that deliver updates and innovations to the digital portfolio of products and features for the Geocaching community. You will know how to manage each team’s time and protect the team from distractions. You will roll up your sleeves to creatively solve problems and tackle impediments with your teams. You will offer recommendations to the Product Managers to improve the quality of incoming user stories, monitor workloads, track risks and dependencies, and look ahead to strategize release planning. You’ll report to the Director of Product and work directly with Product Managers and Designers; Lead Engineers; the Data team; and Quality Assurance engineers to integrate, plan the work, and communicate on status.
Key Responsibilities

• Develop a clear understanding of projects within the program portfolio, leading multiple scrum teams with a clear understanding of business and IT context, and develop an understanding of cross-program synergies and dependencies.
• Establish the scrum framework for each project to secure scrum and management team working agreements; demonstrate the value of scrum principles to members of Geocaching HQ, with support from senior product delivery leaders; bring the benefit of Agile best practices and industry standards to HQ
• Provide clear visibility into progress to the product delivery team senior leaders and executive team.
• Know when issues or risks need to be escalated and escalate effectively, providing options to move forward.
• Hold an attitude of transparency to grow trust from stakeholders, partners, and team members.
• Commit the team to deliver the features of the sprint and check the status of this commitment at each team stand up, creating a culture of accountability.
• In partnership with the product owner and technical leads, mentor and coach scrum teams on user story sizing and acceptance criteria definition, facilitate the definition of minimal viable product, and lead continuous refinement and prioritization of the product backlog.
• Lead sprint planning and task definition, sprint execution, impediment removal and tracking, sprint review, and retrospectives, as well as drive development of the release and sprint roadmaps.
• Ensure that Agile-related project reporting, such as burndown metrics, velocity, and release status updates, are relevant, transparent, and add value.
   

Qualifications & Required Skills

• At least 5 years’ experience leading Agile teams on complex, integrated platforms preferred, across multiple Agile approaches
• Bachelor’s Degree required; Master’s Degree in Information Systems, Computer Science, Business Administration, or Management a plus.
• Scrum Master Certification required.
• Experience leading Agile scrum teams on complex integrated platforms in a commercial product setting (3 years)
• Defining and executing SDLC processes for product delivery teams (3 years)
• Experience delivering cross platform and SaaS B2C solutions (5 years)
• Product Owner certification is a plus.

Attributes and Abilities

• Able to work across multiple disciplines, roles and teams
• Works independently yet identifies opportunities to collaborate
• Ability to negotiate and navigate the nuances of bringing people together to launch products in HQ’s desired win-win outcomes
• Able to take a systems perspective on the interdependencies of product delivery and see the larger picture
• Strong coaching and facilitation skills
• Strong analytical skills
• Ability to manage multiple priorities, drive solutions and define trade-offs
  

 Physical Demands and Work Environment

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to remain stationary for long periods of time. In this position, you must be able to regularly lift and/or move up to 10 pounds.

This job description should not be construed to imply that these requirements are the only duties, responsibilities, and qualification for this job. Incumbents may be required to follow any additional related instructions, acquire related job skills and perform other related work as required.
Geocaching HQ embraces a diverse and inclusive workplace. Authenticity is one of our company core values and we strive to celebrate our differences. We encourage everyone to apply.