NEW JOB OPENING
BUILD AND RELEASE ENGINEER
IN Chicago, IL, USA!

• **Only those lawfully authorized to work in the designated country associated with the position will be considered.**

• **Please note that all Position start dates and duration are estimates and may be reduced or lengthened based upon a client’s business needs and requirements.**

Release Train Engineer
Work Location: Must be local to Chicago
Must report to work onsite 3 days per week
Anchor days: Tuesday, plus 2 flex days
Work Hours: 8:00am- 5:00pm CST

The Release Train Engineer (RTE) is a servant leader and coach for an Agile Release Train (ART). The RTE is responsible for facilitating program execution and helping the teams deliver value. The RTE helps the ART grow its agile maturity in order to rapidly respond to change. Besides facilitating ART events and processes, RTEs communicate with stakeholders, escalate impediments, help manage risks and dependencies, and drive relentless improvement.

An ART is a long-lived team of agile teams which incrementally develops, delivers, and potentially operates one or more solutions in a value stream. ARTs are synchronized to a common iteration length and follow a common program increment (PI) schedule of five 2-week iterations.

Experience Level: 3

Top 3-5 IT Skillsets:
• Minimum 5 years of in-depth experience in delivery of enterprise level software or hardware solutions
• Experience as an RTE or scrum master
• Strong understanding of Agile principles and mindset
• Strong analytical abilities, negotiation/presentation skills, and organizational/planning abilities
• Strong leadership, coaching, facilitation, decision-making, and management skills
• Problem-solving skills and ability to coach others to solve their problems
• Strong written and verbal communication

Qualifications (must haves):
• Minimum 5 years of in-depth experience in delivery of enterprise level software or hardware solutions
• Experience as an RTE or scrum master
• Strong understanding of Agile principles and mindset
• Strong analytical abilities, negotiation/presentation skills, and organizational/planning abilities
• Strong leadership, coaching, facilitation, decision-making, and management skills
• Problem-solving skills and ability to coach others to solve their problems
• Strong written and verbal communication
• Ability to lead teams to reach consensus and have passion for product and value delivery
• Creative - able to use knowledge gained through prior experience, education, and training to resolve issues and remove delivery barriers
• Ability to establish and maintain positive working relationships with business and represent accurately the perspective of Technology
• Expert in Azure DevOps tool. Able to set up new ART/Teams structure templates, queries, dashboards etc.
• Ability to work productively with all levels in a large organization

Education and Experience
• Bachelor's degree or equivalent educational or professional experience and qualifications
• 5-10 years of relevant work experience in a leadership role
• Three or more years of experience with Agile methods, especially scaling frameworks (SAFe, SoS, LeSS, etc.)
• Proven expertise in managing the delivery of mid-to-large digital or enterprise applications
• Ability to understand and relate to the business objectives
• Experience working with distributed teams: internal teams and offshore vendor teams

Nice to have:
• SAFe Release Train Engineer (RTE) or other Scaled Agile certifications a plus
• Experience with leading or supporting an agile transformation
• Financial Services or other regulated industry experience a plus
• IC-Agile certifications a plus
• Extensive experience with Agile engineering practices and techniques

Tasks & Responsibilities:
• Manage and optimize the flow of value through the ART, using various tools such as the Program Kanban and other information radiators
• Facilitate PI Planning readiness by fostering a Continuous Exploration process which drives the synthesis of a Vision, a Roadmap, and Backlogs
• Facilitate the PI planning event. Facilitate periodic synchronization events, including the ART Sync. Facilitate System Demos
• Facilitate feature and capability estimation by teams
• Improve the flow of value through the Value Stream by improving practices associated with DevOps and Release on Demand in the Continuous Delivery Pipeline
• Summarize the Team PI Objectives into Program PI Objectives and publish them for visibility and transparency
• Assist tracking the execution of features and epics
• Capture, analyze, and publish appropriate team and program metrics that drive and guide delivery decisions
• Build and manage timely communication channels with leadership, business stakeholders and delivery teams
• Help teams manage risks and dependencies; escalate and track impediments; provide input on resourcing to address critical bottlenecks
• Work with Product Management, Product Owners, and other stakeholders to help ensure strategy and execution alignment. Encourage collaboration between teams

• System and Enterprise Architects/Engineering.
• Working with Engineering leadership, ensure inclusion in program backlog of Non-functional Requirements (NFRs) and support awareness of delivery controls and compliance
• Drive relentless improvement of the ART via Inspect and Adapt workshops; assess the agility level of the ART and help them improve and mature
• Partnering with Modern Delivery Methods, coach leaders, stakeholders, teams, product owners, and scrum masters in Lean-Agile practices and mindsets
• Work with ART Product Owners and Scrum Masters to identify items to escalate to the program leadership team, IT leaders and steering committee. Recommend staffing, delivery, and schedule optimizations

How:
• Listen to and support teams in problem identification and local decision-making
• Create an environment of mutual influence and openness
• Keep teams focused on release commitments and milestones
• Encourage and support the personal development of individuals and the teams
• Think beyond day-to-day activities; apply Systems Thinking
• Support the teams’ commitments