Manager – IT Strategic Products – Remote Opportunity

Description

About KinderCare Education ®

KinderCare Education operates more than 1,380 early learning centers, and more than 560 Champions sites, supported by a corporate team of nearly 600 headquarters employees in Portland, Oregon. In 2019, KinderCare Education earned their third Gallup Great Workplace Award – one of only 39 companies worldwide to win this award.

• In neighborhoods with ourKinderCare ® Learning Centers that offer early childhood education and child care for children six weeks to 12 years old
• At work through KinderCare Education at Work™, family benefits for employers including on-site and near-site early learning centers and back-up care for last-minute child care
• In local schools with ourChampions ® before and after-school programs.

Job Summary:

The Manager – IT Strategic Products leads our team of Scrum Masters who collaborate closely with our Product Owners and Agile Delivery teams. They are responsible for monitoring their work in progress and providing feedback to ensure goals are understood and met.
As Manager of IT Strategic Products, you will be responsible for building partnerships across the company and communicating effectively to maintain alignment and ensure delivery of optimum product solutions. This opportunity requires a strong background in building and coaching high-performing Scrum Master teams, ideally in a Scaled Agile environment.

Who you are:

• A highly experienced practitioner, you excel at taking your deep understanding of Agile and coaching best practices that are appropriate, scalable, and sustainable for a broad range of products and stakeholders.
• A servant-leader at heart, you thrive on leading high-performing individuals and view your role as ensuring that they are always fully supported and set up for success.
• As team coach, you recognize the diversity of capabilities within your team and leverage their experience and skills to mature and elevate talent.
• An activator, you run at challenges and simultaneously embrace change.
• As a trusted thought partner, you drive to align the team to the KCE vision of product delivery and you are excited to bring your excellent experience to bear in the spirit of continuous improvement.
• A relationship builder, you recognize that partnership and collaboration at all levels is foundational for success.

Key Responsibilities:

• Directs and reviews the work of the team and provides training to enhance knowledge and skills
• Partner with IT Portfolio & PMO governance in creating and driving adoption of our Product Management Framework (PdMF) to build consistency, quality, and meaningful metrics across our product delivery
• Encourage team environment that fosters collaboration, knowledge-sharing, positive culture, talent growth and be comfortable with performance management to support successful delivery.
• Develop and monitor SMART annual performance goals and objectives for individuals and the team
• Collaborate with business partners by building great relationships and fostering trust
• Serve as IT Leader or partner with IT Leaders on specific Products to lean in where necessary and drive decisions and outcomes when needed
Education/Skills/Abilities/Leadership Requirements:

• Demonstrated success serving as Scrum Master and/or Agile coach for a variety of Product teams (web, Infrastructure, enterprise systems, etc)
• Proven effective and engaging leadership style, creating an inclusive team environment fostering growth and results
• Clear history of risk management and mitigation
• Excellent influence and communication skills, including navigating difficult conversations with stakeholders and staff and ability to explain technically complex concepts to non-technical stakeholders
• Ability to remain calm in high-stress situations
• Proven ability to effectively manage team of stakeholders throughout the organization
• Agile certification (CSM, PSM, SAFe) highly preferred
• Knowledge of Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) preferred
• Working knowledge of traditional (waterfall, hybrid) Project Management delivery a plus

KinderCare Education employs more than 32,000 team members across 1,700 locations nationwide. Our devoted family of education providers leads the nation in accreditation and includes KinderCare® Learning Centers, KinderCare Education at Work®, Champions® Before- and After-School Programs, Cambridge Schools ™ , Knowledge Beginnings® and The Grove School®.

KinderCare Education is an Equal Opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, national origin, age, sex, religion, disability, sexual orientation, marital status, military or veteran status, gender identity or expression, or any other basis protected by local, state, or federal law.