Description
Virtual Innovation Facilitator & Agile Coach
Collaborative Innovation Facilitators – this might be your dream job!
SAIC's Innovation Dojo team is looking for people to join our awesome team. We're hiring a unique combination of highly collaborative Innovation Facilitators, Agile/DevOps coaches, UX and learning designers who are passionate about getting results and continuously learning from the experiments they run together. This position can be performed anywhere within the U.S.
While no single person will have everything, the combined team of experts needs to include all of the following skills because we help each other master all of the skills over time. So, look at the topics in the buzzword bingo list below. Which of these do you have extensive experience and expertise facilitating and coaching in a virtual (or hybrid) situation now? Which are you not skilled in yet but highly motivated to learn next? IT IS NOT EXPECTED THAT YOU HAVE ALL OF THESE SKILLS NOW but we need you to currently be excellent at facilitating virtual work sessions in at least two of the first six (6) categories. During the interview process you’ll show your skills and style by facilitating an outstanding, live, fun, interactive group work session. Then your participants will share insights and live feedback to help you grow. If this is your ideal job – then the dojo “interview” experience will be fun for you!
_ /DevOps: Kanban, Ceremonies, User story & backlog development, Planning Games, DevOps technical tools & practices, Agile Games, (Coaching PO’s, SM’s, Teams, Users & Servant Leaders)
_ Microlearning & learning game design and development
_ Design Thinking & UX: JTBD, User interviews, empathy, story mapping personas, journey maps, ideating, prototyping and more
_ Large group events: Pitch panels, Hackathons, Conferences, Open Space, Communities of Practice
_ Stakeholder alignment and complex collaborative decision making sessions with Leadership, Executives & Investors
_ , MVP’s, / Lean canvas
_ Some other amazing innovation method or framework that you convince us is essential!
We know this is a unique combination of skills. So, instead of looking for a unicorn, we're bringing together people who have each mastered a subset of these skills to learn from each other as a collaborative team. So, when you reply to this posting, make sure to clearly tell or show us your current specialty as well as what you're most enthusiastic about learning/doing next. We work best with teammates who effectively assess their skills and seek feedback so we all learn from each other and accomplish great things together.
If you think something important is missing from our list -> tell us! We love feedback.
Who are we & what is SAIC's Innovation Dojo about? With a passion for fostering innovation using agile, design thinking and startup methods, we evolved SAIC's Innovation Dojo into a place of experimentation and continuous learning where virtual and hybrid teams achieve peak performance and collaboration.
Things you'll do if you join our team:
- You'll focus on listening to executives and engineering teams and care about what they need in order to expertly design virtual facilitated work sessions or microlearning that help them get results. You'll accomplish this by re-using many of the industry standard facilitation and coaching methods listed above as well as new techniques you/we invent as a team.
- When clients ask you for unexpected things or problems, you'll respond with a curious and positive "possibilities mindset".
- Then, you'll work together in different "pairs" to plan/design and deliver your customized facilitated learning sessions carefully. But, when unexpected things happen, you'll respond and change accordingly.
- You'll collaborate with your team of facilitators, coaches and learning designers who have different ideas, opinions and skill sets
- You'll try/learn new digital collaboration tools and sometimes use them live with teams before you have time to master them
- You'll invent new ways to leverage tech that’s vetted or use on client and SAIC networks such as Zoom, Confluence, BlueScape, InVision, Vyond, MSTeams, Slack and Adobe Premier video editing.
- You'll set up virtual collaboration and learning spaces with content we all create and teach people how to use the tools necessary to participate in sessions you designed
- You'll network with industry peers and potential customers
- You'll proactively investigate and learn new things that foster innovation, productivity, agility and collaboration. Then you'll turn around to illustrate or capture what you discovered so that everyone we/you work with benefits from your new knowledge - because that's fun for you!
- You'll engage in team sales activities and demo what we do to clients so they can see us/you in action
- You'll effectively (model) facilitate Scrum ceremonies so others can observe how it's done
- You'll do other random duties assigned to make the team successful (not just because we have to say this but because things pop up constantly and we're a team of servant leaders willing do things ourselves to succeed)
Common requests we hear from the clients & people we serve:
- "Help us innovate & become a high performing, collaborative team"
- "Help us get REAL benefits of Agility or DevSecOps"
- "Help us bust obstacles & lead change" (Executives)
- "Help us fix _X_ and create new possibilities/solutions"
- "Help us launch a new _(product/team/initiative/startup/transformation)_"
- "Teach us_(Agile, DevSecOps, Collaboration, Design Thinking ... and more)_
When you hear requests like these, do you ask questions and then offer your virtual facilitation or coaching skills to help? Then you have nothing to lose by reaching out.
Attributes, Mindsets & Behavior Patterns that lead to success on this team:
- Very high skill in facilitating/teaching/coaching on the topics (above) to get results
- Listening well to clients/users, reflecting back on what you heard/learned and using a "possibilities mindset" to help them succeed
- Carefully and creatively designing and facilitating sessions, games and coaching activities that help other people succeed
- Experience with or knowledge of Agile, DevSecOps, engineering, software development or government contracts execution/delivery
- Flexibility to pivot as we discover our clients have a new pattern of needs (our product evolves like a startup)
- Humility to question your own assumptions and collaborate with others even when you disagree
- Growth mindset of constant learning and continuous improvement
- Collaborating and teaching what you've learned
- Responding to change over following a plan
- Fearlessly running experiments, being surprised and objectively learning from them
- Sense of humor & ability to resolve conflict by having crucial conversations
- Requesting feedback and using it to improve yourself, others and results
Things that all lead to failure in this role?
Bias against any of the methods we facilitate, unproductive competition with your teammates, lack of motivation/drive or self-organization, declining feedback, avoiding crucial conversations, huge ego, lack of interest in how software or engineering solutions are delivered, inability to engage a diverse group of people or generate psychological safety among the clients or teams we work with/for, failure to master neutral facilitation and coaching skills, fixed mindset about your role (“staying in your lane”), becoming easily frustrated with roadblocks, surprises or situations when you're sure you're right and others are wrong.
Qualifications
Required Education and Experience:
- U.S. Citizenship is required
- Bachelors and eighteen(18) years or more of related work experience; OR Masters or higher and sixteen(16) years or more experience; PhD or JD and eight (8) years or more experience
- Three (3) or more years of hands-on Agile experience or experience as lean startup owner (if your primary expertise is “Agile methods”, a minimum of 5 years of agile coaching experience is required)
- At least one year of Professional Virtual Facilitation experience
- Six (6) months of fully virtual work experience
- Demonstrated current ability to skillfully facilitate or coach one or more listed topics
- Outstanding communication skills
Desired Qualifications (beneficial, not required):
- Certifications in any of the key topics areas: Design Thinking, Agile, UX or learning design
- Secret or Top Secret Clearance (past or present)
- Options to work as a contractor, part-time or full-time employee
COVID Policy: Prospective and/or new employees will be required to adhere with SAIC's vaccination policy. Full vaccination will be required before the start of employment in order to work onsite at an SAIC location. If applicable, prospective or new employees may seek an exemption to the vaccination requirement at and must have an approved exemption prior to the start of their employment. Employees working onsite at a customer location must comply with customer requirements which may include mandatory vaccination, mandatory attestation regarding one's vaccination status and mandatory weekly or bi-weekly testing.
Target salary range: $185,001 - $195,000. The estimate displayed represents the typical salary range for this position based on experience and other factors.
