Senior Agile Advisor

Would you like to help SURF take the next step toward becoming a strong and cohesive development organization? As a Senior Agile Advisor, you’ll bring focus, structure, and continuous improvement to a complex environment where strategy, collaboration, and software development converge. In doing so, you’ll have a direct impact on the digital future of higher education. Does this sound exciting to you? Then we’re looking for you!

Where you will work

SURF is the ICT cooperative for Dutch educational and research institutions. Together with them, we work on digital services and complex innovation challenges to enhance the quality of education and research. At SURF, multidisciplinary product and development teams work on reliable, scalable, and future-proof solutions.

What makes this role unique is the opportunity to help design a development organization virtually from the ground up and to have a direct influence on collaboration, prioritization, and working methods, all within an environment that makes a social impact.

The team you will join

You will become part of the development organization’s setup team: a multidisciplinary team comprising specialists in development, design, architecture, quality assurance, privacy & security, and organizational development. You will primarily collaborate with the Accessible and Open Education & Research unit and initially operate in the space between SURF and Npuls, the national program for digital transformation in education. The ultimate goal is to implement Agile working practices throughout SURF.

You will be part of an open, inquisitive work environment that explicitly encourages reflection, experimentation, and improvement. We work in a hybrid model and meet regularly in Utrecht.

What you will do

In this role, you will provide direction for the Agile way of working within SURF’s development organization. You will help teams and stakeholders collaborate more effectively, make decisions transparent, and pursue continuous improvement. You will operate at the intersection of strategy, methodology, and organizational development, ensuring that Agile is not only implemented but also sustainably refined.

You serve as a substantive sparring partner for product owners, team leads, and Scrum Masters, helping to identify patterns and bottlenecks at the organizational level. In doing so, you initiate improvements and ensure consistency in how teams work, learn, and collaborate.

Your other responsibilities include:

• Advising team leads, product owners, and stakeholders on Agile practices and organizational issues;
• Further developing the Agile methodology and the structure of the development organization (processes, roles, collaboration, and working methods);
• Strengthening collaboration and alignment between teams, architecture, design, and the SURF Developer Platform (SDP);
• Establishing and facilitating the Scrum Master Guild and encouraging knowledge sharing at the team and unit levels;
• Making priorities, dependencies, and investment decisions visible (e.g., through visualizations);
• Identifying opportunities for improvement and translating them into experiments and interventions;
• Contributing to and ensuring the Agile vision and policy development from your expert role within SURF;
• Supporting Scrum Masters and teams in applying and improving the Agile methodology.

Your skills and experience

You thrive in complex environments where diverse interests and perspectives converge. You switch effortlessly between substance and communication and know how to engage people at various levels. You enjoy collaborating, but you also take the lead independently. With your curiosity and reflective skills, you contribute to a learning organization and technology that makes a social impact.

In addition, you have:

• A university-level education and relevant background (e.g., IT, business administration, or public administration);
• Agile certification (e.g., ICP-ACC) or equivalent;
• several years of experience in an advisory, coaching, or facilitating role within a development organization;
• extensive experience with Agile working and team and organizational development;
• experience designing and implementing Agile methodologies;
• the ability to switch between strategic, tactical, and operational levels;
• strong communication skills and persuasiveness;
• a good command of the English language.

It is an advantage if you have experience with portfolio or investment issues, work in complex organizations with multiple product groups, or have an affinity for platform thinking.

SURF takes pleasure in doing its recruitment itself; acquisition is therefore not appreciated.