Lead Delivery Manager (6 month contract)

Two Circles is a global sports agency. We drive growth for sports properties by delivering deeper connections with fans, through the intelligent use of data and technology.   

We work with some of the world’s biggest sports organisations – including the NFL, Premier League, Formula 1, AFL, Wimbledon and UEFA – and have been named Sport Industry Agency of the Year on more than four occasions.  

We are almost 1000 people, based out of 14 offices, and we deliver work for sports and entertainment businesses of all shapes and sizes all over the world 

Data is at the center of our approach - helping clients to get a better understanding of their customers and deliver insights that influence top-level decision-making. From there, we develop digital products and integrate data and technology solutions that grow audiences and revenue across ticketing, participation, sponsorship and media. 

Role Profile:

The Agile Delivery Lead is responsible for leading and implementing Agile principles whilst working alongside Developers to ensure teams understand and benefit from these methodologies. They will act as a facilitator to remove blockers and enable ease of working using Agile principles, as well as ensuring successful delivery by the technology team.

This role will work closely with client facing teams to ensure understanding of high impact and detailed requirements.

You will have an in-depth understanding of Agile principles and practices and technical capability for identifying and prioritizing the most critical areas of the delivery.

Requirements

Your main duties & responsibilities:

• Understand objectives of Client Projects and the role our Technology team play in them, ensuring we work together to achieve them successfully
• Use your experience of high-level planning and your detail-orientated approach to guide and manage your team towards success. Oversee and keep up to date all team duties, ensuring delivery milestones are met and the team is proactive and fully engaged.
• Maintain and develop positive working relationships with stakeholder and colleagues across our agency, collaborate with them to define and refine requirements, backlogs and priorities, keeping them up to date on delivery at all stages
• Support and empower multi-disciplined teams ensuring they are motivated, collaborative and working well together
• Identify and manage risks, ensuring delivery to agreed timescales
• Facilitate, coordinate and manage ceremonies such as planning, refinement, stand-ups and retrospectives
• Encourage and foster a culture of continuous improvement, championing an agile mindset across the team and into our wider business
• Oversee successful delivery into production, identifying obstacles and helping the team to overcome them
• Lead, influence and coach others, including those more senior, on the implementation and adoption of best practice Agile and DevOps methodologies

The ideal background and skills we are looking for include:

• Proven experience leading delivery within software development or technical engineering for multiple concurrent clients, customers or stakeholders
• Working with multi-disciplined matrix teams
• Significant knowledge of introducing and coaching Agile methodologies and frameworks like Scrum, Kanban, and Lean
• Hands-on knowledge configuring and using tools that support agile and collaborative working, e.g. Jira, Azure Devops, Git
• Good understanding of the holistic lifecycle of Software Development and previous experience of implementing DevOps practices within an organization,
• Understand and advocate DevOps culture and squad mentality in SDLC
• Excellent facilitation skills and change management experience
• Great interpersonal and communication skills and a passion for Agile

Experience with the following would also be beneficial:

• Previous technical experience, especially in BI solutions and the Microsoft Azure Data stack
• Experience of, or a keen interest in, the business of sport