Senior Business Analyst, Vendor & Financial Management Job

A Business Analyst within the Vendor & Financial Management team works as a liaison between the business and technical communities in the sourcing and development of solutions that support business needs.  The ideal candidate has a solid understanding of procurement (source to contract) practices, has a strong background/interest in testing with a very keen eye for detail and experience (or willingness to learn). The successful candidate will review, analyze, and evaluate business systems and user needs, document requirements, define scope and objectives and recommend approaches to meet business strategies. The Business Analyst, , elicits, analyzes, communicates, validates and translates business needs into artifacts in support of procurement activities .
 
The Business Analyst will support multiple technology delivery portfolios, collaborating with the Product Owner,  squad, and internal customers to identify and maximize opportunities to leverage information and technology capabilities to enable business use cases. The Business Analyst, assesses processes and information streams, identifies use cases and is proficient in the utilization of the appropriate tools, models and techniques as part of articulating requirements to vendors and partners.
 
This position requires strong business analysis skills and procurement experience, an ability to learn about technology solutions rapidly, the agility to respond to constant change, strong IT knowledge, as well as excellent communications and analytical skills. It also necessitates strong collaborative and relationship management skills given the high level of interaction.
 
Responsibilities

Ability to:

• Understand business needs and translate them into appropriate documentation to support procurement activities
• Deconstruct complex technical solutions and explain them to a non-technical audience in simple and clear terms.
• Present complex or conflicting situations/issues to stakeholders.  Uses persuasion, influence, negotiation and conflict resolution skills
• Solve problems leveraging critical thinking concepts and data
• Contribute to the creation of the end-to-end product vision roadmap with product owner
• Utilize broad knowledge of business processes, applications, products, business strategy and internal and external customer needs to contribute to the optimum business solution
• Recognize pro-actively where solutions impact related applications, business processes, or data/information integrity
• Lead informative well-organized presentations and facilitate sessions to review requirements and identify gaps; ability to bring others to agreement around a set of ideas to achieve the goal or bring about beneficial resolution
• Deliver clear, complete and usable documentation, that is right sized for the product, and that the client and/or product owner can validate to support the sign-off process; and is serviceable for the technical project members to deliver the solution. 
• Monitor and critique, through peer review, written communication of other BAs on the project team when applicable
• Support enterprise change management activities

Relationship & Change Management

• Work collaboratively with the squad towards a common goal
• Build, sustain, and leverage positive relationships with persons within and outside his/her areas of immediate responsibility as well as external contacts; anticipating, assessing, and meeting their needs in a mutually beneficial manner; as well as managing expectations
• Share industry best practices and tools to create a positive climate and stimulus to encourage long-term learning and development for personal growth and growth of others
• Anticipate, prepare, and respond effectively to change; creating an open, receptive work environment
• Ensure BA activities and outputs align with standards set forth by EDC Business Analysis Chapter
• Support delivery squad as required with conducting of interviews, site visits and other research tasks as inputs to product design and development
• Partner with delivery squad to conduct test and learn / product demos with users and translate user feedback into technical requirements
• Support/coach junior BAs as required

Sprint-Level Delivery

• Work closely with Product Owner/Scrum Master to ensure backlog of requirements/user stories are up to date, prioritized, refined, and ready for implementation in a sprint.
• Coordinate, plan and manage sprint-level deliverables, by determining the best approach to use for gathering, validating and prioritizing requirements based on the nature of the project, risks and complexity
• Apply agile mindsets when identifying and resolving any issues created by changing requirements
• Participate in all sprint-based activities (Sprint Review, Retrospectives, Backlog Refinements) as required.

Screening Criteria

• Undergraduate Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Commerce, Business or related field 
• 7+ years of experience as a Business Analyst or similar position
• Extensive experience in procurement, contracting, sourcing and/or vendor management
• Extensive experience in developing statements of work supporting competitive procurement processes
• Solid knowledge of Agile Delivery Practices
• BA Certification such as Certified Business Analysis Professional™ (CBAP®) or IIBA Agile Analysis Certificate or willingness to obtain 
• Excellent investigative and analytical skills. Ability to translate broad, strategic intent into tactical plans and directions. 
• Excellent oral and written communication skills. Ability to communicate with both business and technical audiences.  Strong listening skills.
• Strong relationship management skills, including facilitating group sessions and displaying leadership within a project team.
• Strong problem-solving skills.
• Understanding of Cybersecurity principles and how they can be applied to the requirements gathering process.
• Experimental mindset to drive innovation

Assets

• Strong Customer Experience (CX) and User Experience (UX) background
• Knowledge of Microsoft Office 365
• French/English Bilingual
• Dev SecOps Delivery
• ADO (Azure Dev Ops)
• Experience in financial industry / services or FinTech
• Basic knowledge of banking, cash flow management, loans

Salary Range

• $89,000 - $133,600, plus performance based incentive