Lean-Agile Center of Excellence (LACE) Coach

About Our Team

The Lenovo AI Ecosystem Group is a newly formed organization targeted at transforming Lenovo's AI product offerings into a world class AI ecosystem environment that delivers a unique and leading AI experience for our customers. To accelerate our transformation, Lenovo is creating a Lean-Agile Center of Excellence (LACE) - a strategic function dedicated to embedding Lean-Agile principles, SAFe practices, and continuous improvement across the organization. We're seeking a LACE Coach to lead, mentor, and enable our global teams and leaders on their Agile transformation journey.

Location: Chicago is highly preferred, open to remote work.

What You'll Do

The Lean-Agile Center of Excellence (LACE) Coach is a strategic change leader responsible for cultivating Lean-Agile maturity across Lenovo's AI Ecosystem organization. This role works at the organizational level, guiding transformation at scale, enabling alignment between strategy and execution, and fostering a culture of innovation, collaboration, and relentless improvement. You will partner with executives, Program Management, Product Management, and technology leaders to build a sustainable Agile operating model that powers Lenovo's AI innovation engine.

Transformation Leadership

• Serve as a Lean-Agile transformation leader by understanding the organization's goals, structure & needs, creating a strategy for transformation & leading Lean-Agile transformation
• Select & adapt an Agile process that supports the success of the organization & operationalizing this process globally.
• Coach executives, ART leaders, and teams in SAFe principles and Lean thinking.
• Deliver short-term improvements to efficiency, quality & productivity through process & tools improvements that support the overall Agile transformation
• Collaborate with senior leadership to align transformation goals with business outcomes.

Coaching & Enablement

• Mentor Release Train Engineers (RTEs), Scrum Masters, and Product Owners across the organization.
• Champion Lean-Agile mindset shifts at all levels of the organization - from teams to executives.
• Deliver training, workshops, and maturity assessments to support ongoing Agile capability growth.

Program Improvement & Governance

• Establish transformation metrics and use data-driven insights to measure and accelerate maturity.
• Guide Inspect & Adapt initiatives at the organizaitonal level, identifying systemic impediments and facilitating improvement cycles.
• Partner with IT, HR, and Operations to integrate Agile ways of working into enterprise processes.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Engineering, Business, Computer Science, or Organizational Development.
• 10+ years of experience in Agile and Lean transformation,
• 3+ years in enterprise coaching roles.
• Experience leading large-scale SAFe or Lean-Agile transformations.

Preferred Certifications

• SAFe Program Consultant (SPC) - required or strongly preferred.
• SAFe Agilist (SA) or SAFe Release Train Engineer (RTE).
• Certified Enterprise Agile Coach (CEC) or ICAgile Certified Expert (ICE-AC/ATF).
• Deep understanding of SAFe, Lean Portfolio Management (LPM), and organizational change management.
• Exceptional facilitation, communication, and executive coaching skills.
• Strong ability to influence at all levels - from teams to C-suite.
• Familiarity with AI, data-driven organizations, and digital transformation is a plus.