Job Title: Lead Release Train Engineer

Location: Washington D.C. – Hybrid Remote

Eligibility: Candidate must possess an active Secret clearance

Job Description:

Responsibilities:

Strategic Leadership and Alignment

- Lead and coach teams at the enterprise level to implement SAFe
practices, working with leadership to ensure strategic alignment
with Agile values.

- Collaborate with senior leadership to guide the organization through
SAFe’s Lean Portfolio Management, ensuring strong alignment between
strategy and execution.

- Enable Lean Budgeting by working with leadership to align financial
management practices with Agile principles.

Program Execution and Coordination

- Manage program execution by acting as a servant leader, ensuring
teams deliver value consistently and efficiently through the program
lifecycle.

- Build and maintain program-level roadmaps, partnering with Product
Management to align with business priorities and long-term
objectives.

- Facilitate Program Increment (PI) Planning, Inspect and Adapt
workshops, and other key SAFe ceremonies to drive alignment across
task orders and delivery teams.

- Coordinate task order activities across teams, acting as the central
point of collaboration for Agile Release Train (ART) activities
across BPA task orders

Integration and Dependency Management

- Oversee task order integration and dependencies, identifying,
monitoring, and managing interdependencies to ensure seamless
delivery of integrated solutions.

- Establish and maintain integration strategies, tools, and processes
for cohesive functionality across systems and deliverables.

- Facilitate cross-task order program alignment by working with task
order leads, stakeholders, and contractors to ensure deliverables
align with overarching program goals.

- Ensure seamless integration testing and delivery of fully
functioning systems across all task orders.

Team Enablement and Development

- Provide hands-on coaching to Agile Release Trains (ARTs), Product
Managers, and Scrum Masters, fostering continuous improvement and
self-organizing teams.

- Mentor less experienced Agile coaches and Scrum Masters to develop
coaching skills across the organization.

- Train teams on SAFe best practices through workshops and training
sessions to strengthen adherence to core SAFe principles.

- Drive a culture of transparency, accountability, and collaboration,
focusing on building high-performing, self-managing teams

Risk and Impediment Management

- Proactively identify and address risks, impediments, and bottlenecks
that affect the ART’s ability to deliver program objectives.

- Support change management processes by providing leadership to
manage changes across task orders and ensuring alignment with
long-term goals.

Stakeholder and Relationship Management

- Foster relationships with Business Owners to steer decisions and
ensure alignment with organizational objectives.

- Act as a liaison between task orders and enterprise leadership,
communicating progress, risks, and challenges while providing
actionable solutions.

- Collaborate with stakeholders to define priorities and allocate
resources across task orders, balancing strategic needs with
delivery capabilities

Governance and Compliance

- Ensure compliance and governance by aligning program execution with
organizational standards, regulatory requirements, and Agile
principles.

- Maintain compliance across task orders to adhere to applicable
standards, policies, and Lean-Agile practices.

Performance and Metrics Tracking

- Establish key metrics to track progress and performance, ensuring
adherence to Agile best practices and SAFe principles.

- Conduct Agile maturity assessments periodically to review team
performance and create actionable plans for improvement.

- Track BPA-wide metrics to monitor integration progress, delivery
performance, and alignment with program objectives.

DevOps and Delivery Optimization

- Promote a DevOps culture by fostering continuous delivery pipelines
and automation practices across task orders to ensure consistent
delivery.

- Support value stream delivery by working closely with System
Architects, Product Management, and other key roles to optimize
outcomes.

Minimum/General Experience/Requirements:

- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Business, or a related
discipline.

- SAFe Program Consultant (SPC) certification is required.

- 8+ years of experience coaching agile teams in complex, large-scale
environments.

- A minimum of 10 years’ experience in Agile coaching, including
expertise in implementing frameworks like SAFe, Scrum, Kanban, and
Lean.

- Proven ability to lead enterprise-level agile transformations.

- Deep knowledge of Lean Portfolio Management and Agile Release
Trains.

- Strong proficiency in Agile project management tools (Gitlab, Jira,
Confluence etc).

- Excellent communication and leadership skills, capable of engaging
and influencing senior leadership and cross-functional teams.

Preferred Requirements:

- Extensive experience in coaching senior leadership and teams on
advanced Agile practices, including scaling Agile frameworks across
large and distributed teams.

- Proven track record of successfully leading enterprise-level Agile
transformations, guiding organizations through cultural shifts and
process improvements.

- Ability to coach and mentor other Agile coaches, Scrum Masters, and
product teams, developing a center of excellence for Agile
methodologies within the organization.

- Deep understanding of Agile metrics (e.g., velocity, cycle time,
lead time) and their application in driving team and organizational
performance improvements.

- Experience facilitating large-scale Agile ceremonies such as Program
Increment (PI) Planning, Inspect and Adapt workshops, and
executive-level retrospectives.

- Expertise in change management strategies for large enterprises,
particularly in Agile adoptions, and fostering an environment of
continuous improvement.

- Strong knowledge of Lean-Agile leadership principles, with
experience implementing Lean Portfolio Management and helping
organizations align strategy with execution.