Technical Delivery Manager (multiple roles)

It’s an exciting time to join Cervest. Our inaugural product, EarthScanTM, will launch in 2021. EarthScanTM is an automated climate risk impact discovery tool that measures the impact of climate change on physical assets like buildings.

Backed by leading VCs in Europe and the US, Cervest is a climate tech company building the world’s first open access AI-powered Climate Intelligence platform.

Our platform will allow organisations to understand the climate risk across all their assets for any timescale and any scenario, anywhere on Earth. Data engineering plays a crucial role in making this vision a reality. The team supports the acquisition, ingestion, processing and hosting of any data and designs, and delivers infrastructure to support efficiency and innovation at scale.

As a company, we are a pro-diversity, highly inclusive organisation, committed to bringing together people of all backgrounds and enabling them to succeed. We know that a richly diverse team will help us achieve our mission sooner.

The role offers an opportunity to join an early-stage, highly mission-driven start-up where you’ll have the ability to make a significant impact on our company as well as on climate change awareness across different industries.

Let’s not sugar coat it. As is true of many start-ups, we’re dealing with simultaneous challenges at any one time. Our teams bring passion, expertise and a relentless quest to achieve the mission we've set for ourselves. Delivery Managers, therefore, are true servant leaders, passionate about creating (and maintaining) the best possible environment for our squads to do what they do best.

We’re certain we’re headed in the right direction and are looking for someone that will not only deliver with their squad but also work with the Head of Delivery to shape the future of the Delivery function and its supporting role to the organisation.

The general benefit expected from having a Delivery Manager working with squads is providing a self-organizing team with ongoing access to someone who has used agile, and scrum in particular in another setting and can help the team figure out the best way to apply it in their situation. They address distractions, disruptions, and obstacles so the remainder of the team is free to focus on the work of producing output that will generate the desired outcome.

Core accountabilities

• Ensuring the squad lives the agile values and principles that they co-create/adopt and follow the processes and practices which enable this
• Constantly reviewing and improving these processes and practices through inspect and adapt practices
• For collecting, evaluating and communicating empirical data to allow squads to make key decisions

Core responsibilities

For ease of understanding these are split into 3 areas (adapted from Scrum.orgs definition of a scrum master).

As a delivery manager, you are responsible for...

To the cross-functional squad

• Clearing obstacles for your cross-functional squad whilst maintaining an environment that supports and enables self-starting and self-organising
• Protecting the squad from outside interruptions and distractions
• Helping the cross-functional squad focus on creating high-value Increments that meet the Definition of Done
• Ensuring the agreed scrum events take place are positive, productive, and kept within the timebox
• Responsible for maintaining your squads’ RAID log and ensuring it is current

(note: you are not the default accountable person for the contents of the RAID log, that falls to specific people within the organisation)

• Addressing squad dynamics
• Ensuring a good relationship between the squad and the product owner as well as others outside the squad
• Responsible for maintaining your squad’s roles and responsibilities matrix (or RACI)
• Responsible (but not accountable) for ensuring the squad tracks their work in Cervests work tracking tool, currently Clubhouse

To the Product Owner

• Helping find techniques for effective Product Goal definition and Product Backlog management
• Helping the squad understand the need for clear and concise Product Backlog items
• Helping establish empirical product planning for a complex environment
• Facilitating stakeholder collaboration as requested or needed

T o the organisation

• Leading, training, and coaching the organization in its Scrum adoption
• Planning and advising Scrum implementations within the organization
• Helping employees and stakeholders understand and enact an empirical approach for complex work
• Removing barriers between stakeholders and Scrum Squads
• You share responsibility for delivery of the product with your squad members and stakeholders

How does this fit into the wider organisation?

• Reporting to the Head of Delivery, you will be the third Delivery Manager at Cervest
• Delivery sits within the Product and Technology organisation within Cervest and works closely with stakeholders across the organisation where relevant - we’re not interested in creating siloes
• You will work with (a) cross-functionals squad(s) that contribute to the delivery of our first product to market

Requirements

Skills

• You have a working, demonstrable understanding of agile project management methodologies.
• A strong communicator with excellent interpersonal skills, able to relate and empathise with all levels of the Cervest organisation. Is able and comfortable relaying complex information and ideas in meaningful and creative ways
• Ability to approach issues by seeking the solution rather than seeing the problem
• Able to walk the fine line between assertiveness and diplomacy in challenging situations
• Can carry a mental view of the salient information pertinent to the execution of the squads’ goals and objectives
• Self-development and learning is a key part of who you are: as a member of the Delivery Team you will have the opportunity to get exposure to and learn a multitude of different project management skills and methodologies.
• Demonstrates a passion for their work: approaches all tasks in a wholehearted and enthusiastic manner
• Entrepreneurial - regularly demonstrating initiative and innovation and recognising and maximising opportunities for the squad(s), team (Delivery)and Cervest
• A highly motivated self-starter
• Recognise the need for management support when necessary
• Deals constructively with frustration and pressure, maintaining a professional and positive manner

Qualifications and experience

• Scrum Master certified (or appropriate on the job experience)
• Proven ability to support Science, Data and customer-led software, enterprise-level development projects
• Experience supporting multi-function project teams with at least 5-10 team members including but not limited to, Scientists, Designers, Developers, Business Analysts, and QA Personnel

Benefits

Opportunities to learn, grow and thrive with support from talented and empathetic team mates

We are a remote first company and looking for candidates who would be able to come to our office in London (once travel is sensible) a few times a year using more sustainable transport methods (we’ll help with that) so generally within one time zone of the UK.

Fuller list of benefits on our main career page – we’re an early-stage startup and currently reviewing our benefits in light of becoming a remote-first company. We are committed to ensuring that we support our team in developing in line with their aspirations and talents as well as continuing to develop our culture in line with our values.