Agile Delivery Lead

Job Description – Agile Delivery Lead

About Hiscox:

At Hiscox we care about our people. We hire the best people for the work, and we’re committed to diversity and creating a truly inclusive culture, which we believe drives success. We embrace hybrid-working practices, balancing the ability to work remotely with the culture and energy we experience when we are face-to-face in our offices. Our focus on collaboration and cross-functional working is supported with virtual tools that minimise physical travel, hot-desking neighbourhoods that create a physical sense of community and Team Charters that our teams co-create to set out how they’ll work together. This modern way of working has contributed to impressive employee engagement scores across Hiscox and means we’re delivering even better solutions for our Hiscox Colleagues. As an international specialist insurer we are far removed from the world of mass market insurance products. Instead we are selective and focus on our key areas of expertise and strength - all of which is underpinned by a culture that encourages us to challenge convention and always look for a better way of doing things. We insure the unique and the interesting. And we search for the same when it comes to talented people. Hiscox is full of smart, reliable human beings that look out for customers and each other. We believe in doing the right thing, making good and rebuilding when things go wrong. Everyone is encouraged to think creatively, challenge the status quo and look for solutions. Scratch beneath the surface and you will find a business that is solid, but slightly contrary. We like to do things differently and constantly seek to evolve. We might have been around for a long time (our roots go back to 1901), but we are young in many ways, ambitious and going places. Some people might say insurance is dull, but life at Hiscox is anything but. If that sounds good to you, get in touch.

Build a brilliant future with Hiscox

Position: Agile Delivery Lead

Location: London Hybrid - 2 days

Introduction:

Hiscox is hiring an Agile Delivery Lead (ADL) to join our Re & ILS business unit to deliver and maintain critical services for the Hiscox Re & ILS business. Our ADLs have responsibility for the coordination of the day-to-day activities of the squads that make up our value streams. This position requires experience of managing a technical team.

What you will be doing:

As an experienced Agile Delivery Lead, you will perform a hybrid role where you will be expected to coach the squad(s) to continuously improve their Agile ways of working. We are specifically looking for someone who has led a technical team and has a technical or development background. You will also own the delivery management of all product development and associated projects. This is an extremely varied, and business critical, role and will include (but is not limited to) the following activities:

Key Responsibilities

1. Delivery ownership and oversight across the cross-disciplined squads (utilising Agile values, principles and practices) within a Value Stream.
2. Relentless focus on delivering value.
3. Actively engaging in service delivery assisting with Vendor management, Financial and budget management, Legal Compliance and Risk management and more.
4. Utilise JIRA boards to facilitate change delivery by actively participating in the collation & prioritisation of the backlog.
5. Help the squad to meet their commitments, remove impediments and dependencies as much as possible, escalate where appropriate when the squad is off track, and ensure they take appropriate action.
6. Ensure stakeholder engagement, communications and expectations are appropriately managed and aligned. Protect the squad/s from external interference.
7. Facilitate and tailor Agile ceremonies, different delivery methodologies, and ways of working at a squad and value stream level.
8. Actively manage risks to deliver maximum business value and remove impediments.
9. Drive continuous improvement through metrics and co-ordinating shared release management activities across multiple squads. Drive technical excellence by helping team improve their technical practices and processes.
10. Support the Change Manager and their Product Owners (POs) across the Value Streams, to ensure the backlogs are appropriately prioritised and that their roadmaps reflect ‘delivery do-ability’. Help the PO manage late and ad-hoc requests by balancing business priorities against existing commitments.
11. Accelerate the timely delivery of requests for support from the squad/s – resolve dependencies between squads through close collaboration with other ADLs. Own the timely and accurate completion of squad administration – including any EPMO and CPRB type reporting that requires regular inputs from the squad.
12. Work with the other members of the Re & ILS Delivery Chapter to share knowledge, best practices and develop as a team.
13. Actively participate in the wider Agile / Dev Ops community to aid continuous learning, innovation, best practice and alignment with Hiscox engineering teams.
14. Actively participate or lead ITIL processes of Change management, request management for the team.

Must Haves:

1. Detailed knowledge of, and experience working with, Agile frameworks (e.g. Kanban / XP / Lean / Scrum).
2. 3+ years’ experience in an Agile Delivery Manager / Agile Delivery Lead / Scrum Master / Product Owner role (or demonstrable evidence of similar skills and experience). This must have been managing a technical team.
3. Knowledge of project management, delivering within an environment of Programme / Portfolio of change.
4. Experience with support of live complex solutions, Incident/Problem management including major incident management.
5. Financial management of delivering change in a commercial environment – able to support effective budget management within the constraints of a value stream or project environment.
6. Experience with agile delivery management and collaboration tools (e.g. JIRA, Confluence, Miro, Azure DevOps boards).
7. Knowledge of technical subjects including architecture, SDLC, CI/CD pipelines, test automation, and other modern engineering practices.

Nice to Haves:

1. Experience working within Value Streams, a service delivery team and a team or with platform services squad.
2. Development and utilisation of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs).
3. Use of data visualisation tools to drive continuous improvement and demonstrate delivered benefit.
4. Financial services and regulated industry experience.