Senior Business Analyst (ITS) - Grants

The University of Southern California (USC) is currently seeking a Senior Business Analyst (ITS) - Grants to join our Application Services team. This role will support enterprise applications and business processes related to grants management, focusing on business analysis, solution design, testing, training, issue resolution, and continuous improvement.

Responsibilities:

• Leads planning, design, and conception of university applications’ functionality. Owns requirements, conceptualizes designs, and influences future-state business processes in support of core organizational functions for the university. Communicates and presents recommended improvements and solutions to business processes and decision-making rationale. Delivers engaging experiences that balance customer needs, business goals, and technical realities by working collaboratively across the organization, with fellow analysts and others (e.g., user experience researchers, product managers, designers, developers)
• Develops Human Centered Design (HCD) processes and approaches to deliver a broad range of sustainable solutions. Engages in standard business analysis methodology, outlining problems, opportunities, and solutions, and identifies process-improvement efforts across the organization
• Builds and delivers design solutions that meet customer needs and expectations. Leads user research efforts to gain understanding of customer and stakeholder pain points, challenges, and needs
• Delivers high-quality project analysis documentation (e.g. business requirements, scope matrices, use cases, future state proposals, user acceptance technology [UAT] plans). Actively mitigates risk by owning tasks, resources, and changes. Enables the release management process by anticipating risks and providing strategic recommendations for releases
• Leads collaborative engagement efforts with a broad range of business partners and stakeholders, including students, faculty, and staff, to productively and comprehensively solve issues. Utilizes leading practices to effectively anticipate, prioritize, analyze, and articulate problems, evaluate and document problem alternatives, manage constraints, and suggest interim and long-term solutions
• Maintains currency on emerging technologies and approaches, leveraging the latest industry knowledge to drive innovation and continuous improvement for the organization. Seek opportunities for innovation and maximizing system functionality by continually developing skills, knowledge, and abilities
• Collaborates with team members and management, implementing effective solutions to support the Product Strategy and Design department’s vision. Maintains currency with technology, standards, and best practices. Supports process improvement efforts within the team and across the ITS organization
• Aids the cultivation of an inclusive environment and a culture of trust and transparency, sharing information broadly, openly, and deliberately. Builds and maintains collaborative relationships with diverse groups of peers, team members, and leadership. Actively embodies ITS values and behaviors (e.g., accountability, ethics, best-in-class customer service)
• Perform other duties as assigned or requested. The university reserves the right to add or change duties at any time

Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree or combined experience/education as substitute for minimum education
• 5 years of relevant professional experience
• Proven record of delivering end-to-end, user-centered products, considering stakeholder requirements, user research, market analysis, data, customer feedback, and technical constraints or opportunities
• Experience leading requirement-gathering interviews or sessions
• Proven experience utilizing analytics tools to measure results of user-centered products, documenting success, presenting opportunities, and supporting decision-making
• Experience developing test strategies and plans, using widely accepted test methodologies or frameworks and proven analytical and problem-solving skills
• Proven ability to facilitate collaboration across a broad audience of stakeholders and drive consensus in alignment with university policies, processes, and procedures
• Proficiency with Microsoft Office tools and applications
• Experience operating with Lean and Agile methodologies, and familiarity with computer programming concepts, including software development lifecycles
• Proven time management and prioritization skills to make efficient, logical decisions in a rapidly-changing environment
• Excellent written and oral communication skills, with experience presenting technical topics in business-oriented fashion to non-technical audiences
• Proven experience establishing strong working relationships with a wide range of team members and clients, utilizing clear and effective functional documentation skills
• Ability to provide strategy and recommendations on design and development methodologies, and leverage lessons learned from past experiences to drive continuous improvement of application and business process solutions
• Bachelor's degree in business administration
• 8 years of relevant professional experience
• Experience with Workday or other financial ERP solutions through ongoing support or deployment
• Experience supporting grants management, research administration, sponsored projects, or related financial business processes
• Experience with tools that support business analysis, requirements management, or Agile delivery (e.g., Jira or similar platforms)
• Experience in IT, business administration, higher education, or related fields