Job Description

At Discover, be part of a culture where diversity, teamwork and collaboration reign. Join a company that is just as employee-focused as it is on its customers and is consistently awarded for both. We’re all about people, and our employees are why Discover is a great place to work. Be the reason we help millions of consumers build a brighter financial future and achieve yours along the way with a rewarding career.

The Enterprise Technology Platforms (ET) team at Discover is looking for a highly motivated and dynamic Release Train Engineer (RTE) to join our growing team. The RTE’s major responsibilities are to facilitate the Agile Release Train events and processes and to assist the teams in delivering value. RTEs communicate with stakeholders, escalate impediments, help manage risk, and drive relentless improvement. We are seeking a candidate who has proven leadership skills, the ability to think critically and problem-solve, and a track-record of ensuring project milestones and deadlines are met. Ideally the candidate will be SAFe and/or SCRUM certified, with several Agile releases on record.

Responsibilities

• Manages and tracks program-level execution and PI feature delivery, escalates impediments and risks (produces reports). Manages and tracks ART-level metrics and score card.
• Drives program-level continual improvement and consistency across Agile Release Train via retrospectives and Scrum-of-Scrums forums.
• Collaborates with other RTEs for resolving prioritization, conflicts and synchronization.
• Establishes Program Increments calendar. Plans and facilitates the Program Increment planning event. Aggregates team objectives into Program PI Objectives and publishes for visibility and transparency.
• Facilitates Program feature Grooming and manages program-level backlog.
• Facilitates Program Level Dependencies with other Release Trains and Shared Services.
• Manage and optimize the flow of value through the Release
• Measure relentlessly
• Establish and communicate the annual calendars for Iterations and Program Increments (PIs)
• Facilitate PI Planning readiness
• Facilitate the PI planning event
• Summarize Team PI Objectives into Program PI Objectives and publish them for visibility and transparency
• Assist in tracking the execution of features and capabilities
• Facilitate periodic synchronization meetings, including the ART sync at the Program Level
• Assist with economic decision-making by facilitating feature and capability estimation by teams and the roll-up to Epics, where necessary
• Coach leaders, teams, and Scrum Masters in Lean-Agile practices and mindsets
• Help manage risks and dependencies
• Escalate and track impediments
• Provide input on resourcing to address critical bottlenecks
• Encourage collaboration between teams and System and Solution Architects/Engineering
• Work with Product and Solution Management, Product Owners, and other stakeholders to help ensure strategy and execution alignment
• Work with the Agile Program Management Office (APMO) on program execution and operational excellence (see Lean Portfolio Management)
• Understand and operate within Lean Budgets and ensure adherence to Guardrails
• Facilitate System Demos and Solution Demos
• Drive relentless improvement via Inspect and Adapt workshops; assess the agility level of the ART and Solution Train and help them improve.

Minimum Qualifications

At a minimum, here’s what we need from you:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Information Systems Management
• 4+ years of experience in coaching and mentoring skills on Agile methodology and understand Scrum Framework, Scrum-of-Scrum lead and working in a scaled Agile environment setting
• In lieu of a degree, 6+ years of coaching and mentoring skills on Agile methodology and understand Scrum Framework, Scrum lead or Scrum master, and working in a scaled Agile environment setting

Preferred Qualifications

If we had our say, we’d also look for:

• In lieu of a degree, 8+ years of experience in coaching and mentoring skills on Agile methodology and understand Scrum Framework, Scrum lead or Scrum master, and working in a scaled Agile environment setting
• Proven ability to champion an idea and bring a group to consensus
• Excellent problem-solving skills involving complex and ambiguous issues
• Experience work in an Agile Scrum delivery framework
• At least 5 years of experience with tactical delivery projects
• At least 3 years of Business Intelligence/reporting experience
• At least 1 year of experience working with cloud data capabilities
• SAFe Agile – 5 Years +
• P&C Insurance – 3 years +
• Scrum Master – 3 Years +
• Release Train Engineer – 3 Years +Proven ability to translate functional needs into technical solutions
• At least 2 years of experience in open source programming languages for data analysis
• ETL/ELT understanding

#LI-KE

Discover Financial Services is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, protected veteran status, among other things, or as a qualified individual with a disability.