Scrum Master

About the Role

AspenView is hiring a Scrum Master to run delivery on core banking conversions for U.S. community and regional banks and credit unions. You will join the conversion team of a U.S. advisory firm that manages these projects on behalf of financial institutions. A core conversion moves every account, loan, card, and transaction history onto a new core platform and re-points everything that depends on it, from debit cards to online banking. The core vendor sets the mock and go-live dates; your job is to get the institution’s side ready for each one, and to say so early when it isn’t.

You will work one institution’s conversion at a time, typically a year or more from kickoff to go-live, alongside a QA specialist, business analysts, and the core vendor’s project manager. Core conversions don’t run on pure Scrum: vendor dates don’t move for a sprint review, so you will run agile inside a fixed plan and protect the team from the churn around it. You own the team’s cadence, the RAID log, and the readiness picture, while scope and the go/no-go call sit with the institution’s steering committee and the client’s engagement lead.

This is a full-time, dedicated nearshore role, working remotely from Colombia or elsewhere in Latin America during U.S. Eastern or Central business hours, and reporting to the client’s conversion engagement lead. Conversion weekends (Friday evening to Monday morning) and some mock runs fall outside normal hours and are scheduled months in advance. Access to institution systems is subject to the background and identity checks required by their vendor-management policies. The natural next step is conversion project manager, then leading conversions across several institutions at once.

What You Will Do

Sprint and Backlog Management

• Own the sprint cadence for one or more conversion workstreams (data mapping, interface remediation, testing, and digital banking re-integration) in Jira and Confluence or Azure DevOps.
• Translate the core vendor’s conversion schedule (mock conversions, parallel runs, cutover weekend) into backlogs and sprint goals the team can realistically hit.
• Flag mock dates at risk weeks before they arrive.

Agile Ceremonies

• Facilitate stand-ups, planning, reviews, and retrospectives, including the retro after each mock conversion.
• Turn balancing breaks and defects into actions with named owners.

Risk and Dependency Management

• Maintain the RAID log across the institution, the core vendor, and the third parties a conversion touches: card processor, digital banking provider, statement vendor, and ACH and wire platforms.
• Track cross-organization dependencies through to closure.

Stakeholder Reporting

• Provide status to the engagement lead and the institution’s conversion steering committee, covering burn-up, defect trends, and readiness against agreed go/no-go criteria.

Cutover and Go-Live Readiness

• Track runbook rehearsals and own the go/no-go checklist.
• Run the command-centre cadence over conversion weekend and the stabilization weeks that follow.

What You Bring

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, Computer Science, Engineering, Finance, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Experience

• 4+ years as a Scrum Master or delivery lead (mid-level), including at least one fixed-date release that slipped, and the ability to explain what you saw first, who you told, and what changed.
• Proven experience coordinating work across organizations you don’t control, with dependencies tracked to closure rather than simply noted.
• Comfort telling a stakeholder “No” or “not yet” with the data behind it and raising a risk while it’s still a risk.
• Status reporting a steering committee can act on: what’s done, what’s at risk, and which decision is needed this week.
• English at B2 level or above, strong enough to run a stand-up with a U.S. bank’s operations team and brief its CIO on a slipped mock conversion without an intermediary.

Technical Expertise

• Running ceremonies and a backlog in Jira, Azure DevOps, or an equivalent tool, and knowing when a ceremony is wasting the team’s time.
• Confluence or similar tools for documentation and team collaboration.

Nice to Have

• Core conversion projects in the financial industry, from any side: bank or credit union, core vendor, or consultancy.
• Exposure to major U.S. core platforms: Fiserv (DNA, Premier, Signature), Jack Henry (SilverLake, Symitar, Core Director), FIS (IBS, Horizon), Corelation KeyStone, or newer platforms such as Temenos, Finxact, or Thought Machine.
• Familiarity with conversion lifecycle concepts: data mapping, mock conversions, balancing and reconciliation, parallel runs, cutover weekend, and deconversion files.
• Knowledge of the ancillary systems a conversion affects: card processing, digital banking, ACH, wires, bill pay, statements, and GL.
• Bank or credit union merger integrations, where the conversion date is set by the deal.
• Hybrid delivery: agile workstreams inside a waterfall or vendor-driven master plan, or SAFe PI planning.
• Conversion change control and test sign-off under FFIEC guidance and NCUA, FDIC, or OCC examination.
• Reporting with Smartsheet, MS Project, or Power BI.

Certifications (Preferred)

• CSM, PSM, SAFe Scrum Master, or PMP.