As a scrum master, you are the key to ensuring that product sprints go smoothly. You are vital to helping the product owner of the scrum team to understand and clearly outline the priorities and values in any given project, while overseeing the development team to make sure the project is successfully delivered. You mediate stand-ups and coach the development teams to make sure everyone is on the same page to complete the project.
Scrum masters are within the same realm as project managers, so there will be a similar job outlook for them. The expectation for growth within the field can be up to 100,000 new jobs by 2029, depending on the industry the position is in.
As with all project-related functions in a business, you’ll want to make sure your resume is full of qualitative and quantitative examples of past projects. Relevant skills and accomplishments are a perfect pair to get yourself an interview in this competitive field.
Now onto the good stuff: what do successful scrum master resumes look like today in 2023? Let’s dive in with five, strong templates that show your experience off. Then, we’ll take a look at necessary skills for scrum masters to stand out and check out a list of recommended action verbs to tie a beautiful bow on your resume.
The scrum master helps facilitate the adaptation of scrum methodologies in the team. They are responsible for promoting scrum values and ensuring everyone follows this methodology. Some of the responsibilities of the scrum master include planning each sprint, managing the Scrum tool and sprint reviews, eliminating blockers, and reporting.
To become a high-performing Scrum master, you should follow Scrum methodologies, but also leave some space for flexibility. It’s important to demonstrate your resilience on your resume. You can mention previous projects in which you adapted the Scrum methodologies to different project needs.
Scrum Masters have one core goal, and that's to increase their team's efficiency using project management methodologies. You can show recruiters how you've done this by explaining how you improved metrics like team velocity, sprint burndowns, or sprint goal success.
One way to do this is to emphasize a promotion you received on your resume, e.g. a bullet point on your resume could be "Promoted from Agile Coach to Senior Scrum Master within 18 months due to exceeding expectations and increasing team velocity by 25%".
Experience is often what makes you stand out from the crowd. This scrum master resume has a strong focus on said experience with an impressive summary and all attention on previous roles. The skills, education, and other sections are an added bonus that complement your experience as a scrum master in your past positions. Let’s take a look at what this scrum master does right to stay competitive in 2023!
The summary in this resume demonstrates a quick and thorough overview of your experience from the last three positions. Specifically, there is an emphasis on eight years of experience as a scrum master, related skill sets, and mention of leadership and a promotion due to prior success.
A scrum master needs a variety of hard, technical skills to do their job properly do their job. They need to be versatile in various areas such as SQL, programming, project management, and data analysis — depending on the field. This resume has an impressive list that shows familiarity with the role’s expectations and capability.
Scrum is a sub-field of the Agile approach. Therefore, an Agile Scrum master helps team members implement these methodologies into their workflow. That’s why they ensure everyone is up-to-date with reporting, the following sprint deadlines, and implementing feedback.
Agile Scrum masters should keep track of team members’ progress, so they will note areas of improvement and share feedback with team members. Some even have occasional 1:1 meetings with them. Keep in mind your resume should reflect your experience in sprint planning, product backlogging, and sprint reviewing. So you might want to mention this in your work experience.
Agile Scrum masters manage the scrum tools for the team, such as Jira or ClickUp. This includes adding tasks, ensuring that cards are up-to-date in each sprint, and helping team members understand the platform. You should add the Scrum tools you are familiar with to the skills section on your resume.
An agile scrum master is a more specialized version of a regular scrum master, and some familiarity and experience helps. This agile scrum master resume shows first-hand experience in the role of an agile scrum master, alongside a history of project management. The cherry on top is the other sections, which demonstrate a relevant education and transferable skills, specifically in relation to working with Agile.
The utilization of numbers and percentages in the experience portion of this resume helps to quantify your achievements and show the real progress that has been made. It helps your potential employer to understand what projects you’ve worked on and what you might do at their company.
The work history section is vital to your resume, as experience is highly valued in 2023. Your bullet points should be straight-forward, while maintaining a strong impact — every word should have a place. Each job on this resume keeps the bullet points at four or under, alongside splitting up the job responsibilities and project examples into two parts.
Just because you’re fresh out of school (congratulations!) or you’re looking to change your career, it doesn’t mean that you don’t have a chance to get into a company as an entry level scrum master in 2023. This resume template does a great job by showcasing your education and spotlighting your relevant internship and project experience in school to stand out from the crowd.
Start your entry level resume off strong with your education, because it's the most recent and thus most relevant to a hiring manager. If you had a high GPA, earned honor roll or the Dean’s list, or took relevant coursework, make sure to add it. If you have a lower GPA like 2.5, you might want to leave it out. Next, share specific projects from your internships. Examples like “managing international stakeholders” and “developing Excel macros” sound impressive!
The world is becoming increasingly globalized, which means that we are doing more and more international business. Establishing and maintaining such relationships will be incredibly important as the 21st century continues, and is already highly desirable in 2023. It shows that you work well with people from different cultures and diverse backgrounds, demonstrating flexibility and an openness to new things.
The Agile coach promotes Agile values and helps team members and organizations adopt these methodologies to improve their efficiency and generate better outcomes. The Agile coach is responsible for training team members, developing systems to manage dysfunction, and reinforcing positive behaviors.
Your resume should demonstrate your ownership of previous projects instead of making you seem like you were only part of them. That’s why you should use strong action verbs that indicate accountability, such as “mentored,” “guided,” or “established”.
You can earn an Agile certification that validates your ability to mentor, guide, and train an Agile team. This certification will help you accelerate your career and improve your visibility in the recruitment process. That’s why it is worth including it in your resume.
Adaptability is one of Agile’s core values. You need to be resilient to change, and this is exactly what your potential employer is looking for. You can demonstrate this by mentioning previous challenges you faced in your work experience and indicating which systems you used to overcome them. Agile coaches help companies sustain change through mentoring and training. This way, team members can also become agents of change. You can mention in your work experience section how your mentoring and guidance helped organizations remain resilient.
Agile coaches are a vital part of implementing and streamlining Agile processes for a team, company, or both. They’ll teach Agile best practices, integrate new teams within existing non-Agile processes, and measure results of the implementation. This agile coach resume highlights your experience with Agile, coaching, and leadership. As a specialist in everything Agile, check out this agile coach resume template on how to catch the recruiter’s eye in 2023.
Since an agile coach is part of the project management and scrum framework process, you’ll have worked on multiple projects before. This resume talks about some leadership and training experience, and both are vital to this position. Use this opportunity to take the time to be proud of the completed project experience you have.
The “Other” section of resumes is an important space. It can be used efficiently and it can be wasted, depending on the content. This resume lists awards for “RW’s Top 30 Under 30” and “nationwide case competition out of 500+ participants.” The latter impressively states how many people were competing and shows that you came out on top. Always give context when describing awards - this tells recruiters the significance of your awards.
Junior scrum masters have the same general tasks as their senior counterparts, but they are supervised by senior scrum masters or managers. Tasks assigned to you may include coaching scrum teams, working with different departments to complete a project successfully, and problem-solving for teams you are coaching.
Recruiters want to see three things when looking at your resume. Firstly, you need to have scrum certification and knowledge of Agile methodology. Secondly, they will need to see an educational background in computer science or a related field. And thirdly, they want to see that you have put your scrum training into practice and coached/led teams effectively. Build your resume with these points in mind. This resume highlights all three points very successfully.
The scrum framework is very specific, and there are certain keywords and phrases that can be used to show recruiters that you are well versed in the framework. Terms like ‘scrum master’ and ‘product owner’ are common scrum terms.
Do not make the mistake of concentrating your efforts solely on showing your scrum qualification and forgetting the need to show your IT qualifications. Ensure your skills section includes a tools section where you list all the relevant software you are experienced with. Remember to keep updating the list as newer software comes out.
All scrum masters can be project managers, but not all project managers are Scrum Masters. A project manager who is a scrum master is knowledgeable and certified in Scrum project management methodology. Some scrum methodology includes having short daily meetings, and short work cycles known as ‘sprints’. You must be certified in Agile and more specifically scrum and must have experience using this methodology. Beyond that, your resume must show what your team has been able to accomplish under your leadership. Take a look at this recruiter-approved resume sample.
You are not qualified for this job if you do not have Scrum certification. So make sure your Scrum certification as well as any other Agile certification or skills take center stage in your resume.
This is not an entry-level position, so show recruiters your journey to Scrum Master. This applicant shows a progression from assistant project manager, to project manager, to Scrum Master. Career progression shows your dedication to the profession and excellence in each position.
A Scrum Master is in charge of a team and ensures they complete projects and work in line with Scrum principles. Your tasks may include leading team meetings and coaching your team, problem-solving for your team, ensuring cohesion and good communication within your team, etc. Your program manager responsibilities might include setting budgets, managing risk, and ensuring all team members properly understand the project goals and the part they play in accomplishing them.
To be considered for this position you must be an expert in Agile methodology and should have Scrum certification. Beyond that, recruiters would like to see a successful background in project management. Here is a strong program manager/Scrum Master resume.
Give recruiters a clearer idea of your management experience by including figures of how many teams you have led and how big the teams were. This applicant has an impressive history of managing numerous teams.
Show recruiters that you are qualified as a Scrum Master by including all the Agile skills you may have. This applicant has included Agile skills in their ‘technical skills’ ‘industry knowledge’, and ‘tools and software’ sections.
As a senior scrum master, you’re, well, a master of your craft. You’ve been through the scrum process more times than you can count and want to continue to do what you do best. This senior scrum master resume has a compelling emphasis on previous project experience with impressive numbers to back you up.
As we’ve talked about, experience with other cultures is desirable in 2023. This resume template specifically says the applicant can speak intermediate Chinese. With the exponential increase in remote work, there are many international companies hiring in America and vice versa. Having the skill to speak more than one language is admirable and can set you apart from other candidates.
Using power verbs in each of your work experience’s bullet points gives your resume a strong voice. This senior scrum master resume uses words like “facilitated,” “implemented,” and “negotiated.” Each of these words implies leadership and a business savvy skill set, particularly in relation to financials and budgeting. The more you can say with as few words as possible, the better.
A senior scrum master is a team leader in the agile development department. Using agile methodology, senior scrum leaders manage the progress, flow, and efficiency of engineering projects. This role facilitates open communication across development teams and ensures goals will be met on time.
This role requires technical skills. Hiring managers will look for someone with a bachelor’s degree in engineering or computer science. In addition, relevant professional certifications will catch a hiring manager’s eye. To land this role, you need a deep understanding of agile development, which can be obtained via continuing education and/or experience. Typically, someone works as a scrum master for several years before becoming a senior scrum master.
Agile is a term used to describe iterative software development. Agile development allows software engineers to complete projects more quickly, with less error, and more room to incorporate feedback. A senior scrum master oversees and plans the Agile development strategy for their team. Therefore, you should be well versed on how to implement successful Agile processes and showcase that on your resume. Be sure to highlight any big successes that came out of the projects you have led.
To land a role as a senior scrum master, it’s important to highlight technical knowledge and project management skills. To bolster your resume, you can gain certifications in either area. The PMP (Project Management Professional) certificate is a great way to show you have studied effective project management strategy. The CSM (Certified Scrum Master) is a way to show employers you are well-versed on implementing Agile methodologies.
Skills are important for any job, but especially for a scrum master. You’ll want to make sure to carefully comb through the job description, responsibilities, and required criteria to get past the company’s dreaded applicant tracking system (ATS). This software is used by companies in order to filter out resumes that don’t fit the guidelines that they’re looking for. Make sure to use keywords from the job posting in your resume to beat the system!
To help you get started, here’s a list of curated keywords and relevant hard skills for a scrum master. These skills are transferable and it’s crucial that you only list skills that you have. The skills that you offer can additionally be supplemented by your work and project experience — if you used Python or Agile for your past projects, don’t forget to mention it in your work experience as a specific example.
This word cloud highlights the important keywords that appear on Scrum Master job descriptions and resumes. The bigger the word, the more frequently it appears on job postings, and the more 'important' it is.
Scrum masters are team players and work to keep the team environment clear of obstacles. They coach others about scrum, Agile, and coordinate with project managers and owners to keep the project running as smoothly as possible. Scrum masters are experts at communication and keeping the team on track without any distractions to get the job done as efficiently as possible.
With that out of the way, let’s talk about some important tips to get your scrum master resume noticed by a recruiter in 2022:
Action verbs bring your resume to life. Instead of using boring starters like “responsible for” or “worked on,” you’ll want to begin every bullet point with a bang. Otherwise, you run the risk of sounding like you did the bare minimum for your job and merely followed the basic standards of the role.
Your expert use of action verbs in your vocabulary offers a creative first impression to the reader of your resume. Since scrum masters are responsible for making sure the team is a well-oiled machine and driving productivity to complete projects, you’ll want to let the recruiter know what you actually accomplished with powerful verbs like “initiated,” “strategized,” “pioneered,” and more. If you want to spark interest and excitement, make sure to enlist the use of these words.
For a full list of effective resume action verbs, visit Resume Action Verbs.
If you're a senior-level employee, or you're changing careers to become a Scrum Master, it's useful to add a paragraph at the top of your resume highlighting your most impressive accomplishments. This is called a resume summary.
Here's an example of a summary that can be used on a Scrum Master resume.
A resume summary is a totally optional section, and in most cases, it's better to leave it out of your resume than include it. For example, if you're a student or mid-level hire, you should not include a summary, and instead use the space to add to your work experience.
To learn how to write an effective resume summary for your Scrum Master resume, or figure out if you need one, please read Resume Summary Examples for Job Seekers: When To Include One.
You should use bullet points to describe your achievements in your Scrum Master resume. Here are sample bullet points to help you get started:
Organized and improved agile practices and values which increased the productivity and overall team satisfaction by an average of 8%
Managed international stakeholders in India, United Kingdom and Hong Kong by hosting daily standups and coordinating weekly status reports
Led multi-disciplinary 7 person team to design, develop, and launch online e-commerce store; prioritized and resolved 45+ new features and bug fixes
Managed a 10-member cross-functional (engineering, product, sales, support) team and coordinated with five business partners towards the successful launch of an e-commerce website
Collaborate with developers and product management team to assess project outcomes and prioritize future app features
For more sample bullet points and details on how to write effective bullet points, see our articles on resume bullet points, how to quantify your resume and resume accomplishments.
