BUSINESS ANALYST

As a UW employee, you have a unique opportunity to change lives on our campuses, in our state and around the world. UW employees offer their boundless energy, creative problem solving skills and dedication to build stronger minds and a healthier world.

UW faculty and staff also enjoy outstanding benefits, professional growth opportunities and unique resources in an environment noted for diversity, intellectual excitement, artistic pursuits and natural beauty.

The UW Finance Transformation Program (UWFT) is a $270M initiative to replace the University’s financial systems with an integrated system to manage the full suite of financial transactions and reporting needs in the UW system – to include academic, administrative, and healthcare. UWFT will fundamentally change the processes and tools that the University employs to track, spend, collect, manage, and report University finances in excess of $7B in annual revenues, resulting in more timely and actionable information for leadership.

Among the UW’s highest administrative priorities, this multi-year initiative is one of the largest finance system projects in Washington State and the outcome of the program will be highly visible at all levels of the University and the state.

We have an outstanding opportunity for a Business Analyst to perform detailed requirements analysis, document business processes, and identify areas for improvement. Working in a team with other analysts, this position will participate in best practices and processes for business analysis. This position must work with and influence decisions across multiple teams, including: teams responsible for legacy systems, enterprise IT services, and integrations; the UW’s Finance Transformation program; and partner IT and business units at the UW.

This position will support the ITF program in meeting objectives, creating and maintaining deliverables, driving design issues to solution, ad hoc analysis, understanding data, testing, training and stabilization support. The position must be able to understand business, system and technical issues, and facilitate problem solving and issue resolution. In order to be successful, the incumbent will need to exhibit keen attention to detail while remaining aware of broader University objectives. Additionally, the role will excellent analytical acumen and documentation skills, an ability to prioritize multiple timelines and competing goals and excellent documentation skills.

This position does not have supervisory responsibilities but may be asked to coach other analysts. The position will work closely with other analysts in multiple teams. The Business Analyst is expected to develop stakeholder relationships and facilitate meetings successfully.

The successful candidate will be expected to:

- Provide analytical guidance and support at a programmatic level including mapping and documentation of business processes
- Identify potential risks and obstacles which may hinder successful completion of deliverables and achievement of project goals
- Evaluate processes, identify improvement opportunities and implement required updates/enhancements
- Manage high-volume workloads by multi-tasking, coordinating with peers and communicating with customers as required
- Balance complex and competing priorities in a deadline-driven environment

The analyst will need to exhibit excellent qualities in attention to detail, analytical acumen, facilitating and communication, collaboration with stakeholders and partners, and competing priority management. The analyst needs to have top communication skills at interpersonal level, and in presentation to large groups.
The emphasis and focus of this position is on the “global view” of UW institutional data, the supporting data architecture and blue-prints for this big-picture view, and the task to translate big-picture view into detailed implementation.  The position is cross-cutting, requiring coordination and liaison to internal team roles as well as external groups to ensure broad data integration and business value for UW.

The analyst is expected to collaborate easily and effectively with other team members. This position will also be outward facing to UW campus administrative and academic units for the assessment of critical information needs and for the promotion of standards and best practices in data design and modeling.

Duties & Responsibilities

Analysis (80%)

• Identify, develop and evaluate alternative solutions encompassing a variety of automated and manual techniques and department end user workflow where applicable.
• Perform analytical, design, testing, and managerial tasks associated with the implementation of information system solutions.
• Facilitate end-user working groups to develop shared understanding of needs, develop consensus related to priorities and requirements, and develop inclusive solutions that thoughtfully balance trade-offs and benefits among process partners
• Using proven approaches and problem solving techniques, identify and document business needs, assess alternatives and options, and develop business cases and proposals that support decision making among a diverse set of process partners
• Document functional requirements, user interaction requirements, non-functional requirements, and specifications to support software development, quality assurance, support and learning materials, and other downstream development support processes
• Understand and document business processes, roles, actors and interactions, business rules, and workflow needs related to automating paper-based processes
• Analyze complex information systems, database models and/or interface needs

Leadership (20%)

• Work independently to manage deliverables or key components of major projects — includes defining tasks, managing the work, and being accountable for the deliverable of assigned components.
• Use solid judgment to determine appropriate escalation and resolution of issues within program structure.
• Work with various levels of management to critically evaluate and communicate business issues/risks with conviction to campus clients and team members.
• Lead, organize and influence positively, effectively and maneuver through unstructured problems and create the necessary structure to drive for results.
• Work effectively within a matrixed management structure where reporting relationships will cross organizational boundaries.

Requirements include:

• Bachelor’s Degree, preferably in Business Administration, Information Science, Computer Science or related area or experience.
• Minimum of five years of experience performing progressively more complex work in business analysis.
• Demonstrated experience in business analysis and requirements gathering.
• Demonstrated collaboration skills with colleagues at all levels and across different organizations.
• Demonstrated ability to work independently and with minimal supervision.
• Experience facilitating meetings, constructively addressing input and criticism, and resolving conflicts.
• Effectively presents complex technical material to non-technical audiences in an approachable way.
• Able to understand and communicate business relevance to management / leadership teams.
• Demonstrated excellent written/oral communication skills, technical documentation skills, user liaison skills, and personal interaction abilities.

Equivalent education/experience will substitute for all minimum qualifications except when there are legal requirements, such as a license/certification/registration.

Desired:

• Experience with data deliverables as part of an ERP program team using Workday or comparable products
• Proficient using SQL for data profiling and data analysis.
• Experience in data modeling and data design, incl. relational and dimensional.
• Experience with data management / data integration design and implementations.
• Experience conducting quality assurance and/or user acceptance testing.
• Demonstrated knowledge and work experience with enterprise-wide relational databases, scripting languages, XML, SQL Server, BI reporting tools.
• Knowledge of multiple business subject areas, i.e. Finance and Student, etc.
• Experience in a major research university setting.
• Experience in an Agile software development environment.

Working Environmental Conditions

• Position is available for 100% remote work. This position involves responsibilities and occasional situations where work outside of standard business hours is required to respond to incidents or to meet critical deadlines.

Other Comments

• This position on the Finance Transformation Project is temporarily funded; continued employment is contingent on ongoing funding and performance.

As a UW employee, you will enjoy generous benefits and work/life programs. For a complete description of our benefits for this position, please visit our website, click here.

Application Process:

The application process for UW positions may include completion of a variety of online assessments to obtain additional information that will be used in the evaluation process.  These may include Work Authorization, Cover Letter and/or others.  Any assessments that you need to complete will appear on your screen as soon as you select “Apply to this position”. Once you begin an assessment, it must be completed at that time; if you do not complete the assessment, you will be prompted to do so the next time you access your “My Jobs” page. If you select to take it later, it will appear on your "My Jobs" page to take when you are ready. Please note that your application will not be reviewed, and you will not be considered for this position until all required assessments have been completed.