Scrum Master Staffing Agency
We source CSM and PSM-certified Scrum Masters with real sprint delivery records. Agile-native recruiters. 17-day average fill. Contract, direct hire, or fractional.
Last updated: April 30, 2026
KORE1 is a scrum master staffing agency that places CSM and PSM-certified Scrum Masters in contract, direct hire, and fractional roles, with an average time-to-fill of 17 days across agile-native tech teams.
Most job boards flood your inbox with people who took a weekend CSM course three years ago and ran two sprints at a company they left six months later. We don’t pull from boards. Never have. We recruit from the same companies your Scrum Master would work alongside, which means we know who’s actually running ceremonies well and who just knows the vocabulary.
Founded 2005. Twenty years of tech placement before “agile transformation” became a PowerPoint category. Our recruiters have relationships with people who are good at their jobs and open to the right conversation, not a database of resumes assembled by a sourcing algorithm that can’t tell a velocity trend from a story point estimate.
We place Scrum Masters for SaaS product teams, startups moving off waterfall, enterprise agile programs, and government contractors going through SAFe. Every search starts with your team’s actual situation. Read our Scrum Master salary guide before reaching out if you want to know what comp looks like and where it varies by industry and cert level. We also feed into the broader IT staffing network that sources DevOps, cloud, and data teams, so if you need more than one hire, we can run both searches at once.
We Screen for Agile Fluency, Not Just a Badge
A CSM tells us someone paid $400 and sat through a two-day training. That’s where our verification starts, not ends. What actually matters: have they run a retrospective when the team was two weeks behind and didn’t want to talk about it? Have they pushed back on a PO who kept re-prioritizing mid-sprint because the CEO had a new idea that week? Have they held the process together during a reorg that gutted their team by half?
Our sourcers ask those questions before your inbox sees a name. We check active certifications (CSM, PSM I/II, SAFe, CSPO) and run a behavioral screen on ceremony facilitation, stakeholder management under pressure, and velocity tracking across real sprint history. The credential is table stakes. The conversation is what matters.
Eighteen months minimum. That’s our floor for how long a candidate must have run actual product sprints before we’ll submit them for a senior search. Not internal tools. Not a legacy migration someone relabeled as agile. We track the difference and we tell you exactly which bucket a candidate falls into before you take the first call.
Contract, Direct Hire, or Fractional
Six weeks. Six months. Two years. The engagement model depends on what you’re actually solving for, and a team that needs a Scrum Master to get through a platform launch in Q3 is a very different search from a company that’s never run agile and needs someone to build the practice from scratch. We staff all three without the markup that comes with going through a generalist firm.
Contract placements land within 10 working days on average. Direct hire is 17 days from the intake call to an accepted offer. Fractional, where one Scrum Master runs two or three teams at 50 to 75 percent capacity, we place those on a project basis with deliverables agreed before sourcing starts so the arrangement doesn’t drift.
We don’t upsell. Describe what the team looks like and we’ll find the model that fits. For the full breakdown of how each model works, see our pages on direct hire staffing and contract staffing across tech roles.
Four Things We Check Before You See a Name
CSM & PSM Cert Verification
Certification status. Renewal date. Which frameworks they’ve actually worked in versus which ones they listed on a résumé. We verify all of it before submitting anyone.
Sprint Facilitation Track Record
What did their last retro actually surface? How do they handle a PO who re-prioritizes three days into a sprint? We ask both — and we note when answers are vague.
Stakeholder Alignment Skills
Product owners want features. Developers want stability. Executives want faster. Good Scrum Masters manage all three without burning any of them. We screen for that specifically.
Team Size and Org Fit
A Scrum Master for a 5-person startup and one for a 200-person SAFe program are entirely different profiles. We map fit before submitting, not after the first failed interview.
Scrum Master Hiring Resources
Scrum Master Salary Guide 2026
What Scrum Masters earn by city, industry, and certification level. Set your comp band before starting a search or you’ll lose the good ones at the offer stage.
Read the guide →How to Hire a Scrum Master
What to ask in the interview, how to evaluate ceremony facilitation skills, and the mistakes most hiring teams make when they realize they’ve been describing a PM, not a SM.
Read the guide →Common Questions
How fast does KORE1 typically fill a Scrum Master role?
Most contract Scrum Master placements are closed within 10 working days. Direct hire runs about 17 days on average from the intake call to an accepted offer, though searches that require specific SAFe or LeSS experience tend to run a few days longer because the qualified pool is genuinely smaller for those frameworks.
What certifications do your Scrum Master candidates typically hold?
About 80 percent hold a CSM from Scrum Alliance or a PSM I or II from Scrum.org at minimum. A third of the senior-level placements we’ve made in the past 12 months also carry SAFe SPC or RTE credentials for enterprise-scale agile programs. We verify certification status and expiration date before submitting anyone — we don’t submit expired certs.
Can KORE1 place a fractional Scrum Master who works across multiple teams?
We do it regularly. One Scrum Master managing two or three teams at 50 to 75 percent capacity is a common structure for post-Series B companies that aren’t ready to budget a full-time headcount yet. We set the deliverables upfront so the arrangement doesn’t drift past its original scope six weeks in.
Scrum Master vs. project manager — what’s actually different?
A Scrum Master owns the process, not the outcome. They facilitate ceremonies, remove blockers, and protect the team from external scope pressure. A project manager owns milestones, budget, and external stakeholder communication — a distinction the BLS tracks as a separate occupational category from agile process roles. Some teams need both. Many confuse the two and understaff one role while putting two people in the other. Teams that need a dedicated project manager alongside a Scrum Master can explore our project manager staffing practice.
When does a team need an Agile Coach instead of a Scrum Master?
Scrum Masters work inside a specific team, running ceremonies and coaching the team on sprint execution day-to-day. Agile Coaches work across teams at the organizational level, usually on leadership adoption and cross-team coordination. One team that needs help running its sprints well needs a Scrum Master. Five teams whose coordination keeps breaking down probably need a coach.
What does a staffing agreement with KORE1 look like for Scrum Masters?
Contract placements use a standard staffing agreement with an hourly rate and a defined notice period. Direct hire includes a guarantee period, typically 60 to 90 days, covering replacement if the fit doesn’t hold. We walk through the structure on the intake call before sourcing begins — no surprises mid-search about what the agreement actually says.
Ready to Find Your Next Scrum Master?
KORE1 has agile-native recruiters with 15-plus years of experience placing Scrum Masters at tech companies nationwide. We move fast and we tell you what we’re seeing in the market.
Talk to an Agile Recruiter →