Department:
Technology
Our Company Promise
We are committed to provide our Employees a stable work environment with equal opportunity for learning and personal growth. Creativity and innovation are encouraged for improving the effectiveness of Southwest Airlines. Above all, Employees will be provided the same concern, respect, and caring attitude within the organization that they are expected to share externally with every Southwest Customer.
Job Description:
About Us
At Southwest Airlines, we believe that flying should feel like freedom. For over 50 years, we’ve been connecting people to what matters most with low fares, legendary hospitality, and a heart for service. Our culture is built on the principles of fun, friendliness, and family, making us one of the most admired workplaces in the world.
If you’re passionate about making a difference, love working in a fast-paced environment, and want to help millions of travelers reach their destinations with a smile, Southwest Airlines is the place for you. Here, your career can truly take flight.
Job Summary
- The Data Lake 2.0 Pod owns and builds the common patterns and frameworks Southwest uses to collect, store, and expose data across the enterprise using modern cloud architectures. The team operates with a DevOps mindset and Agile principles — providing reusable Infrastructure-as-Code building blocks that hundreds of Southwest application teams consume and own within their own AWS environments to power analytics, ML, and AI.
- As Senior Scrum Master – Data Lake 2.0, you'll lead the operating health of the pod as it stands up in our Hyderabad office and grows into a core engine of Southwest's data platform. You'll drive predictable delivery through disciplined ceremonies and data-driven improvement, mentor peers on Agile maturity, and create the connective tissue across a globally distributed team so trusted, governed data reaches its consumers faster.
- Serve as the liaison between the business (represented by the Product Owner) and Agile software development teams. Lead two or more Agile teams to reach peak productivity through coaching and mentoring, resolving impediments blocking a Team, and helping to track Team progress while solutioning for problems that may arise in the future. Play a critical role in the adoption of Scrum and other Agile development practices by the organization.
Responsibilities
- Assess the Scrum maturity of multiple Agile Teams and provide coaching and mentoring when necessary
- Educate and support peers in standardizing estimation across the Portfolio Team; ensure continuous refinement of estimation based on Team retrospectives
- Identify impediments and potential solutions; challenge the status quo to improve quality, predictability, flow, and velocity
- Partner with Product Owners to ensure prioritization, goals, scope, and product domain are fully understood by the Team
- Lead effective grooming sessions through a comprehensive understanding of the Business domain and lead Teams in making appropriate commitments through story selection, task definition
- Use data-driven analysis to coach Teams to continuously improve their productivity
- Focus on ever-improving Team dynamics and performance; manage interpersonal conflicts, challenges, and opportunities for growth among the Team
- Communicate effectively within the Team, with peers, Leaders, and Business partners; promote an environment of transparency
- Drive improvements in the development lifecycle by promoting the use of automated builds, simple designs, multi-level testing, and pair programming
- May perform other job duties as directed by Employee's Leaders
Knowledge, Skills and Abilities
- Ability to demonstrate capacity in airport/airline operations, airport finances, contracts, and high regard for interpersonal relationships
- Ability to develop strategies to analyze and negotiate a variety of documents and contracts
- Skilled in strong organization and communication and be comfortable presenting to a variety of stakeholders both internal and external
- Ability to utilize strong problem-solving in an unstructured environment as a self-starter and to create unique solutions to avoid recurring issues
- Ability to effectively manage multiple priorities and deliver high quality solutions on time
- Ability to effectively identify impediments to Team success and recommend solutions
- Knowledge of multiple Agile frameworks (Scrum, Kanban, SAFe) and the ability to appropriately apply to different solutions to complex situations
- Skilled in planning, preparing for, and leading meetings at an advanced proficiency
- Skilled in building and maintaining critical relationships at multiple levels of organizations including the highest levels (for both Internal and External customers)
- Ability to resolve most conflicts without escalation
- Preferred:
- Delivery metrics — WIP, cycle time, throughput, spillover, predictability
- Jira, Apptio TargetProcess, or Azure DevOps for dashboards and release readiness Platform, data engineering, or cloud infrastructure context for backlog and dependencies
- Applied SAFe — PI Planning, ART coordination, feature/story alignment, dependency management
- Coaching teams delivering AI or agentic products where evals serve as unit tests
- Aligning delivery across a globally distributed team through influence
- Protecting the pod's operating health and continuous improvement rhythm
- Building strong team ownership within a newly forming pod
- ServiceNow change management and enterprise adoption strategy
Education
- Required: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems or related field and/or equivalent formal training
Experience
- Required: Advanced-level experience, seasoned and specialized knowledge in:
- Scrum framework, Kanban methods, and SAFe ScrumXP
- Velocity, flow, and team-level SAFe metrics
- Techniques for increasing team effectiveness
- 5-7 years of relevant work-related experience
- Preferred:
- Standing up new pods and establishing cadence, ceremonies, and metrics from the ground up
- CSM or PSM certification
- Working alongside AWS, IaC (Terraform/CloudFormation), or modern data platform teams
- Agile delivery for platform-as-a-product teams with hundreds of internal consumers
- Distributed delivery across multiple time zones
- Coaching teams on AI or agentic capabilities where requirements iterate rapidly
- Mentoring Scrum Masters or delivery leads on Agile maturity
- Agile delivery within a large enterprise
Other Qualifications
- Must meet confidentiality expectations as to confidential, proprietary and sensitive Company information
- Ability to work extended hours as needed
Southwest Airlines is an Equal Opportunity Employer.
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