Core Agile Coach

About Booking.com

At Booking.com, data drives our decisions and innovation is everywhere, but at the heart of everything is making it easier for everyone to experience the world. Technology and people power our journey, shaping memorable moments for millions of travelers across the globe.

Context of Agile@Booking

Agile@Booking is about becoming One Team, uniting leadership and teams across Booking.com through shared values, synchronized practices, and a relentless focus on learning and adaptation. Our transformation program focuses on enabling both leaders and teams to thrive in complex environments by prioritizing outcomes over processes, empowering people at all levels, and advancing psychological safety and transparency.

The Role: Core Agile Coach

As a Core Agile Coach within the strategic Agile@Booking programme, you will partner with fellow Trainers and Coaches to embed the foundational elements into day-to-day team practices. You will enable the programme’s baseline training by supporting the team(s) to put it into practice. You will work with multiple teams in focused engagements of up to twelve weeks, transitioning to new teams once each engagement concludes. During these periods, you will ensure the baseline foundations are executed, assess team needs, design measurable coaching plans and guide teams in applying and sustaining the principles introduced during your time with them. Your work will build on initial training you will co-provide with the dedicated Trainers, ensuring concepts are reinforced, adapted and translated into lasting improvements.

Key Responsibilities

• Embed the transformation baseline training into practice; work with teams to apply and reinforce the training programme content, ensuring agile values, principles, practices, mindsets and concepts are translated into meaningful, day-to-day practices that drive change and improvement.
• Coach for measurable outcomes; Partner with teams and team leadership to define current and target conditions, establish clear measures of success, and track progress over the course of the engagement.
• Track and evidence coaching impact; Ensure all interventions and coaching activities are encapsulated in the agreed framework, clearly showing the journey taken with each team. Demonstrate meaningful improvement against agreed metrics from a baseline.
• Coach in 12-week transformation cycles; engage with up to three teams at a time in focused twelve week cycles, guiding them through the adoption of the baseline expectations from the transformation programme.
• Advance capabilities beyond the baseline; After the baseline practices are embedded, work with teams and leaders to identify further development opportunities, deepen agile capabilities and address specific team needs.
• Collaborate with trainers and internal agile coaches; Maintain close alignment with trainers (who you will co-deliver the baseline knowledge with) to ensure continuity between training delivery and in-team coaching.
• Work with other Contractor and FTE Agile Coaches in the program to identify opportunities for improvement and implement where necessary.
• Contribute to a coaching community; actively participate in the coaching community over the business unit positioned within, share insights, challenges and successes. Work collaboratively with peers to align coaching approaches, learn from one another, and improve practices across all teams within the area of focus.

Collaboration & Communication

• Cooperates, shares information frequently with Team Leadership groups E.g. Engineering Managers, Product Managers, Senior Engineering Managers and Group Product Managers.
• Cooperates and shares information frequently with the Change Lead.
• Cooperates daily with: Product, engineering and internal Agile Coaches.
• Occasional interaction with: External experts and HR / People Team.

Qualifications & Skills

• 3–5 years of agile coaching (or equivalent experience in Product, Engineering, or Delivery roles); broad job knowledge level.
• Proven ability to create and implement a coaching plan with current and target states, identify constraints and run a root cause analysis, driving sustainable change in behaviors.
• Proven ability to lead training sessions for various group sizes, adapting techniques as appropriate.
• Demonstrated experience in delivering engaging training material that follows a “Training from the Back of the Room” approach.
• Proficiency with scaled facilitation techniques such as Liberating Structures.
• Demonstrate the ability to assess the uptake of knowledge of participants.
• Deep understanding of agile values, principles, practices, framework and methodologies.
• Exceptional facilitation, training and stakeholder engagement skills.
• Background in Product and Engineering is highly advantageous.

Key skills/competency

• Agile Coaching
• Scrum
• Kanban
• Lean Principles
• Facilitation
• Training Delivery
• Stakeholder Engagement
• Change Management
• Root Cause Analysis
• Scaled Agile