Senior Business Analyst

Job Description

The Executive Office for Administration and Finance (A&F) plans and executes fiscal and administrative policies that serve to ensure the financial stability, efficiency, and effectiveness of state government. The key responsibilities of A&F include managing the operational and capital budgets of the Commonwealth and managing funds received from the federal government. A&F IT is a unit under the Executive Office for Administration & Finance (A&F) and is overseen by the Secretariat Chief Information Officer (SCIO). A&F IT is a team of approximately 300 skilled and committed IT professionals who develop and maintain technical solutions that address business challenges for Executive Office of Administration and Finance agencies.

A&F IT seeks a Senior Business Analyst to work with senior business leadership at the Executive Office and the technical team assigned to support A&F. The incumbent of the position will work directly with the business leads of the multiple lines of business to understand business needs, document the needs, and successfully convey the needs to the technical team. The incumbent will be responsible for organizing, facilitating, and chairing meetings of business and technical leadership and tracking initiatives to completion. Accordingly, project management experience will be helpful. The selected candidate may also be assigned business analysis and project management responsibilities at other A&F agencies.

This position requires a highly motivated, energetic, experienced professional with a background in business analysis to work directly with senior business leaders to understand and translate business requirements into technical documents that can be used by to develop code or configure systems to address business needs. What is required is a demonstrated ability to be the 'translator' - to help agency staff determine business needs and how those needs can be met through technology; and manage IT staff to implement those solutions. The Senior Business Analyst will report to the Systems Manager and may supervise some of the team. The Senior Business Analyst will also work closely with and support A&F's Budget Director and the Director of Operations or their designees.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Act as liaison between business users and development team to gather Requirements. Look for ways to continuously improve processes & procedures.
• Perform Fit-Gap analysis and support developing viable solutions.
• Maintain the application Knowledgebase with complete and accurate information.
• Troubleshoot data issues including writing SQL queries to the database to identify and resolve data issues. Analyze the data request and collaborate with the team to process the request.
• Work with implementation team to ensure that the acceptance criteria are met, and the software meets project objectives and expectations as defined by the business units.
• Participate in project planning, sprint and release planning, daily stand-up meetings (scrums) demos/reviews, retrospectives, backlog refinement meetings, and other Scrum-related meetings.
• Maintain a calendar of key dates in budget development process to ensure systems and guidance are ready in a timely manner for the business to deploy.
• Drafting and developing guidance for systems trainings.
• Create dashboards and data visualizations using data visualization tools.
• Perform other tasks, as assigned.

Preferred Qualifications, Skills, and Competencies:

• 3+ years of experience as an IT business systems analyst.
• Experience with the principles of Systems Development LifeCycle.
• Ability to create and maintain several project artifacts including risk register, risk management plan, issue log, use cases and user acceptance test plan and scripts.
• Actively participate in the Agile software development process by adhering to scrum methodology including attending all daily standups, sprint planning, backlog grooming, and retrospectives.
• Experience with project management principles and methodologies.
• Excellent analytical and conceptual skills.
• Experience in creating visual diagrams of the system.
• Understanding of data, database design and SQL skills.
• Experience of writing Business Requirements and/or Functional Specification.
• Experience in using Agile tools such as Jira, Confluence, Azure DevOps, and Version control tools.
• Ability to establish and maintain working relationships and contribute within a collaborative team.
• Strong communication skills including the ability to explain technical solutions to non-technical people.
• Ability to work independently, with general direction and guidance.
• Self-motivated, flexible, team player with solid multi-tasking, time management expertise.
• Proficient with MS Office; including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Visio.

This position is assigned to A&F IT's offices at, 1 Ashburton Place in Boston, Massachusetts. Currently, this position will require in-person and virtual presence, as assigned by the supervisor. The offices at Ashburton Place are MBTA accessible.

An external candidate recommended for a position with the Executive Office for Administration and Finance IT will be subject to a background check that includes checks for: state and federal tax compliance; child support compliance; education verification; Massachusetts CORI checks; criminal background checks in state(s) of current and previous residence/employment; validation of eligibility to work in the United States; and national fingerprint-based criminal background checks.

Qualifications

First consideration will be given to those applicants that apply within the first 14 days.

Minimum Entrance Requirements:

Applicants must have (A) at least two (2) years of full-time or equivalent part-time professional or practical experience in the field of information technology application development and support, or (B) any equivalent combination of the required experience and the substitutions below.

Substitutions:

I. An Associate's degree in a related field may substitute for one (1) year of the required experience.

II. A Bachelor's degree or higher in a related field may substitute for the required experience .

Comprehensive Benefits

When you embark on a career with the Commonwealth, you are offered an outstanding suite of employee benefits that add to the overall value of your compensation package. We take pride in providing a work experience that supports you, your loved ones, and your future.

Want the specifics? Explore our Employee Benefits and Rewards!

An Equal Opportunity / Affirmative Action Employer. Females, minorities, veterans, and persons with disabilities are strongly encouraged to apply.

The Commonwealth is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, disability, national origin, veteran status, or any other basis covered by appropriate law. Research suggests that qualified women, Black, Indigenous, and Persons of Color (BIPOC) may self-select out of opportunities if they don't meet 100% of the job requirements. We encourage individuals who believe they have the skills necessary to thrive to apply for this role.