Scrum master & agile coach

What does a scrum master & agile coach do?

A Scrum master helps a team deliver work in cycles of a few weeks called sprints.

The role looks after how the team works, not what it builds. An agile coach does the same across several teams or a whole department.

In Singapore, you find the role in banks, insurers, government agencies, telcos, tech firms and consultancies. It usually sits in a technology, digital or transformation group. It often reports to a delivery lead, head of engineering or programme manager.

A Scrum Master works with the product owner, developers, designers and testers. They also deal with business stakeholders. Agile coaches add managers and senior leaders to that list.

What the work involves

• Run the daily stand-up, sprint planning, sprint review and retrospective, so each meeting ends with clear decisions.
• Keep the Jira board accurate and spot blocked work before it delays a sprint.
• Clear obstacles for the team, such as slow approvals, missing access or waiting on another team.
• Coach the product owner to keep a ranked backlog with clear, small items.
• Track flow measures such as cycle time and report progress to managers without jargon.
• Coach team members on habits like splitting work small, sharing tasks and giving honest estimates.

Pay in Singapore

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Skills a scrum master & agile coach needs

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Scrum master & agile coach job description

We are hiring a Scrum Master to guide one or two delivery teams in Singapore.

You will run Scrum events, protect the team's focus and help the product owner keep priorities clear. You will work with business and technology staff and report team progress to management.

Responsibilities

• Run sprint planning, daily stand-ups, sprint reviews and retrospectives.
• Help the product owner keep a clear, ranked product backlog.
• Remove blockers that the team cannot clear alone.
• Maintain boards, workflows and reports in Jira.
• Track flow and delivery measures and share them with the team and management.
• Coach the team on Scrum, Kanban and good engineering and planning habits.
• Run workshops for planning, product planning and problem solving across teams.
• Keep team agreements, decisions and notes in Confluence or Notion.
• Work with risk, security and compliance staff so sprint work meets company rules.
• Support other Scrum Masters and share good practice across teams.

Requirements

• A degree or diploma in business, information technology, engineering or a related field, or equivalent work experience.
• Typically 2 to 5 years working in software, product or project teams, with at least 1 year in an agile team.
• Working knowledge of Scrum and Kanban, shown by practice. A Scrum certificate is often asked for.
• Hands-on use of Jira and a wiki tool such as Confluence or Notion.
• Clear spoken and written English, and comfort running meetings with senior people.
• Experience in a regulated sector such as banking or government is an advantage.

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Scrum master & agile coach career path

Most Scrum Masters start in a team or project role and grow into coaching several teams.

The senior steps move towards agile coaching and then leading agile delivery for an organisation.

1. Junior Scrum Master or agile delivery associate

   Entry

   You support one team, keep the board tidy, take meeting notes and learn to run the Scrum events with guidance.

2. Scrum Master

   Mid

   You guide one or two teams on your own, coach the product owner and report team progress to management.

3. Senior Scrum Master

   Senior

   You handle larger or harder teams, link several teams working on one product and mentor newer Scrum Masters.

4. Agile coach

   Lead

   You coach teams, managers and leaders across a department and help change how the organisation plans and delivers work.

5. Head of agile delivery or transformation lead

   Head

   You set the agile approach for the organisation, lead the coaches and answer to senior management on delivery results.

The titles are ones commonly used in Singapore; employers may name the levels differently.

Related jobs and their pay

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Scrum master & agile coach interview questions

We wrote these questions from the skills this job needs. They are not an official question bank.

1. Describe the roles, events and artefacts in Scrum, and say what each one is for.

   What a good answer covers

   • Names the product owner, Scrum Master and developers and what each is accountable for
   • Covers sprint planning, daily Scrum, sprint review and retrospective with their purpose
   • Links the product backlog, sprint backlog and increment to the sprint goal
   • Explains that the events exist to inspect and adapt, not to report status

2. How does Kanban differ from Scrum, and when would you choose it for a team?

   What a good answer covers

   • Says Kanban limits work in progress and has no fixed sprints
   • Picks Kanban for steady, interrupt-driven work such as support or operations
   • Mentions pull, visible workflow and flow measures
   • Admits a team can mix both and explains how

3. A team's velocity swings widely from sprint to sprint. How do you read that, and what do you do?

   What a good answer covers

   • Checks for causes such as unclear stories, big items, absences and unplanned work
   • Warns against using velocity to compare teams or pressure people
   • Looks at several sprints, not one
   • Tries changes like smaller stories and a firmer sprint goal, then checks the result

4. How would you set up a Jira board for a team whose work passes through development, testing and a security review?

   What a good answer covers

   • Maps columns to the real workflow, including the security review step
   • Sets work-in-progress limits on the busy columns
   • Defines what done means so items do not stall in review
   • Uses a few clear issue types and labels, not a long list
   • Sets up a simple report or filter that the team will actually use

5. How do you run a retrospective that leads to real change instead of repeated complaints?

   What a good answer covers

   • Picks a format suited to the team's mood and the sprint's events
   • Keeps the space safe and gets quieter members to speak
   • Narrows to one or two actions with an owner
   • Reviews last retrospective's actions at the start of the next one

6. Which flow measures would you track for a team, and how do you stop them being used to rank people?

   What a good answer covers

   • Names cycle time, throughput, work in progress and blocked time
   • Shows trends over time rather than single numbers
   • Reports at team level, not by individual
   • Uses the numbers to start a conversation and agree on an experiment

7. How do you use Confluence or Notion to keep team agreements, decisions and release notes easy to find?

   What a good answer covers

   • Sets a simple page structure and naming rule
   • Records decisions with the reason and date, not just the outcome
   • Links pages to Jira items
   • Reviews old pages so the space does not fill with stale content

8. How do you use ChatGPT in your work, and what would you never paste into it?

   What a good answer covers

   • Gives practical uses such as drafting retrospective prompts, summarising notes or rewording user stories
   • Checks outputs before sharing and does not treat them as fact
   • Never pastes customer data, staff details or confidential company plans
   • Follows the organisation's rules on approved AI tools

1. Your product owner keeps adding new work in the middle of a sprint. What do you do?

   What a good answer covers

   • Finds out why, such as pressure from a senior stakeholder or a weak backlog
   • Talks to the product owner privately before raising it in front of the team
   • Explains the cost of change in terms of the sprint goal
   • Agrees a rule for urgent items, such as swapping work in and out
   • Checks later that the pattern has improved

2. Two department heads give your team conflicting priorities, and both say theirs is urgent. How do you handle it?

   What a good answer covers

   • Does not let the team choose between senior people
   • Takes the conflict to the product owner or the common sponsor
   • Shows the trade-off clearly using the backlog and capacity
   • Gets a single ranked order agreed in writing
   • Keeps both heads informed of what will and will not be done

3. Your team works under a fixed-scope, fixed-date contract. How can you still use agile practices?

   What a good answer covers

   • Accepts the constraint and does not argue against it
   • Splits the scope into small increments and ranks them by risk and value
   • Uses short feedback loops with the client to catch changes early
   • Agrees a change process for scope that moves
   • Tracks progress with burn-up charts that show scope and time together

1. Tell me about a time you coached someone who did not want to change how they worked.

   What a good answer covers

   • Describes the situation and the person's reason for resisting
   • Shows listening before advising
   • Gives a small, low-risk step that the person tried
   • Reports the result honestly, including what did not work

2. Describe a sprint that went badly. What did you change afterwards?

   What a good answer covers

   • Owns the part you played without blaming the team
   • Explains how the cause was found
   • Names a specific change and how you checked it worked
   • Shows what you learned that you now use in other teams

1. A support ticket in your team's Jira board contains a customer's NRIC number and phone number. What do you do under the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA)?

   What a good answer covers

   • Removes or masks the personal data and limits who can see the ticket
   • Checks the organisation's data protection policy and tells the data protection officer
   • Does not copy the data into chat tools, wiki pages or AI tools
   • Reviews how it got there and agrees a team rule to stop it happening again
   • Knows that a real data breach must go through the organisation's reporting process

2. You join an agile team at a bank regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). How do you fit sprints with change approvals and risk controls?

   What a good answer covers

   • Meets risk, compliance and security staff early to learn the required controls
   • Builds control steps and evidence into the team's definition of done
   • Keeps releases small so approvals are easier to give
   • Does not skip or hide controls to keep up speed
   • Shows the control owners the board so they can see progress

Common questions about a scrum master & agile coach job

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