Senior Business Analyst / Scrum Master

Halvik•Vienna, VA

About The Position

The Senior Business Analyst / Scrum Master will support the SPARKS (Safety Program & Record Keeping System) modernization effort for the U.S. Department of Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). SPARKS replaces the legacy CARS II application and enables NHTSA's Office of Vehicle Safety Compliance (OVSC) to catalog, store, and manage data used to enforce Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS). This role serves as the bridge between federal stakeholders, end users, and the development team - facilitating Agile ceremonies, leading requirements elicitation, and ensuring all project artifacts and documentation are accurate, complete, and accessible.

Requirements

Bachelor's Degree in Business, Information Systems, or related field is required.
Minimum of 10 years of overall professional experience, including at least 5 years as a Scrum Master.
Strong written and verbal communication skills that translate well into requirements baselines that both technical experts and business owners can understand.
Ability to provide detailed, comprehensive, testable, and traceable process components in a variety of formats.
Demonstrated experience performing operational analysis of business processes and web-based applications.
Must meet U.S. Department of Transportation / NHTSA contract clearance and onboarding requirements.
Scrum Master Certification (CSM, PSM, or equivalent) required.

Nice To Haves

Demonstrated success in federal contracting, particularly with U.S. DOT, NHTSA, or other federal civilian agencies.
Familiarity with Agile/Scrum methodology and scaled agile frameworks (e.g., SAFe).
Hands-on experience with JIRA, Confluence, and Google Workspace.
Strong analytical and problem-solving capabilities.

Responsibilities

Facilitate daily standups, sprint reviews, retrospectives, and sprint planning sessions for the SPARKS team.
Guide the team to avoid over-committing and scope creep; support estimation, story breakdown, and sub-task creation.
Administer the team's scrum board and ensure JIRA cards are accurate, current, and actively groomed.
Eliminate external blockers and address internal roadblocks through process or workflow improvements.
Influence stakeholders to support project objectives and business priorities.
Validate existing business processes and recommend improvements.
Lead requirements gathering sessions and document the resulting business, functional, and non-functional requirements.
Partner with functional users to identify, prioritize, and document requirements.
Support requirements prioritization and backlog grooming sessions.
Assist in preparing for customer and user meetings, including process planning and scheduling.
Interact with customers to provide process guidance in response to reviews, inquiries, concerns, and requests.
Plan and manage the use of document templates across the project.
Develop meeting agendas and capture and distribute meeting minutes and action items.
Develop and maintain comprehensive project documentation, including requirements specifications, user stories, traceability matrices, and process flows, ensuring all artifacts remain current, version-controlled, and accessible in the project's shared repository such as Confluence.
Ensure all team guidance, work products, and related documents are kept up to date and posted to a common document repository.
Identify and assess process and operational inefficiencies, identify gaps, and develop recommendations on business process improvements; support implementation and monitoring activities associated with these initiatives.