Principal Business Analyst (Credit Union Operations Transformation)

Position: Principal Business Operations Transformation Lead
Location: Remote with Travel
Employment type: Contract position

The Principal Lead for Operations Transformation will play a key role in the design and implementation of a future-state operating model for a multi-credit-union shared-services organization. This individual will serve as the Lead and primary bridge between business operations, technology, data, AI/automation teams, and project leadership. Previous Credit Union experience is a MUST HAVE. Understanding of regulatory and legal issues regarding US financial services and data security requirements affecting credit unions. In particular, please describe your ability to comply with: - Gramm-Leach-Bliley data security and privacy requirements; - SSAE 18, SOC 2 Type 2; 10 | Page - ISO 27001; - NCUA Regulation 748 A & B. Knowing specific software made for credit unions like "Keystone" is a must-have

The Senior Lead will have 12-15+ years of experience and have led 2-3 previous projects in business transformation, one of which must have been for a credit union. You will lead current-state discovery, process analysis, requirements definition, KPI baselining, future-state process design, and benefits validation, with an initial focus on Deposit Operations. The role will help identify opportunities to improve efficiency, service quality, scalability, control, and member experience through workflow orchestration, automation, artificial intelligence, and improved use of institutional knowledge.

The ideal candidate combines strong business analysis and process transformation capabilities with hands-on experience in credit unions, retail banking, or regulated financial-services operations.

Key Responsibilities Current-State Assessment & Process Discovery 

• Lead structured discovery sessions with credit union and shared-services subject matter experts to understand current business processes, systems, controls, data flows, handoffs, exception paths, and manual activities.
  
• Document end-to-end current-state processes using process maps, workflows, business rules, requirements, and supporting analysis.
  
• Analyze processes across participating credit unions to identify common workflows as well as institution-specific policies, configurations, and exceptions.
  
• Identify process bottlenecks, duplicate activities, manual workarounds, control gaps, rework, and opportunities for standardization or automation.
  
• Facilitate interviews and workshops in a manner that encourages candid input from employees and stakeholders impacted by future process changes.
  

Deposit Operations Analysis 

• Lead detailed analysis of Deposit Operations processes, including areas such as:
  • ACH and share-draft exception processing
    
  • Returned deposits
    
  • ACH research and reclamations
    
  • Manual payroll processing
    
  • Card and member-account support processing
    
  • Remote/mobile deposit review
    
  • Exception and research workflows
    
• Evaluate opportunities to automate, augment, or redesign activities using workflow orchestration, AI, document intelligence, robotic process automation, and related technologies.
  
• Develop recommendations for prioritizing automation opportunities based on business value, implementation complexity, risk, volume, and readiness.
  
• Ensure future-state workflows appropriately address exceptions, escalations, human review, and audit requirements.
  

Business Requirements & Future-State Design 

• Translate business needs into clear, testable business, functional, data, workflow, integration, reporting, and control requirements.
  
• Develop user stories, acceptance criteria, business rules, process models, and requirements traceability documentation.
  
• Partner with solution architects, developers, AI specialists, security teams, and business SMEs to ensure proposed solutions address operational requirements.
  
• Support the design of configurable workflows capable of accommodating multiple credit unions, operating models, systems, policies, and approval structures.
  
• Help distinguish requirements best addressed through commercial technology from capabilities that should be incorporated into the strategic orchestration layer.
  
• Ensure business requirements consider scalability to additional business lines, including Lending and Collections, and to future participating credit unions.
  

KPI Baselining & Benefits Realization 

• Establish and validate baseline operating metrics for targeted business processes, including:
  • Transaction and work volumes
    
  • Manual effort and FTE utilization
    
  • Cycle time and throughput
    
  • Error and rework rates
    
  • Exception rates
    
  • Cost to serve
    
  • Service-level performance
    
• Partner with business and project leadership to develop credible efficiency and business-benefit estimates.
  
• Define measurable success criteria for proposed automation initiatives.
  
• Develop a benefits-tracking framework comparing baseline results with post-implementation performance.
  
• Analyze realized results and provide fact-based recommendations supporting implementation and expansion decision gates.
  

Stakeholder & Change Management 

• Serve as a trusted liaison among operations personnel, credit union leadership, technology teams, compliance stakeholders, and implementation teams.
  
• Facilitate workshops to validate current-state findings, future-state workflows, requirements, and implementation assumptions.
  
• Identify organizational impacts resulting from automation and process redesign.
  
• Support change-readiness assessments, communications, training, knowledge transfer, and transition planning.
  
• Ensure institutional knowledge and critical business rules currently held by individual employees are identified, documented, and incorporated into future-state processes where appropriate.
  
• Maintain a member-service-oriented perspective when evaluating operational changes and automation opportunities.
  

Risk, Controls & Regulatory Considerations 

• Incorporate operational risk, compliance, privacy, security, and internal-control considerations into business requirements and future-state workflows.
  
• Work with compliance and technical teams to ensure requirements appropriately address the regulated credit union environment, including considerations related to GLBA, NCUA expectations, data privacy, auditability, and third-party risk.
  
• Identify requirements for human-in-the-loop review, approvals, exception handling, explainability, and audit trails associated with AI-enabled processes.
  
• Assist in identifying and documenting operational, process, data, technology, adoption, and implementation risks and associated mitigation actions.
  

Testing, Implementation & Governance 

• Support solution validation through requirements reviews, prototypes, demonstrations, and user acceptance testing.
  
• Develop or support test scenarios and acceptance criteria based on documented business requirements.
  
• Coordinate with business stakeholders to validate that implemented workflows meet operational needs before production deployment.
  
• Track requirements, assumptions, dependencies, decisions, issues, and scope changes throughout the engagement.
  
• Prepare business-analysis deliverables supporting project governance and executive/Board decision gates.
  
• Provide clear status, findings, risks, and recommendations to project leadership and client stakeholders.
  

Required Qualifications 

• 7+ years of progressively responsible business analysis, business process transformation, or operational improvement experience.
  
• Demonstrated experience within credit unions, retail banking, banking operations, financial-services shared services, or another highly regulated financial-services environment.
  
• Experience analyzing complex operational processes involving multiple systems, business units, handoffs, controls, and exception scenarios.
  
• Demonstrated ability to lead requirements gathering and process-discovery workshops with both business and technical stakeholders.
  
• Strong experience developing:
  • Current- and future-state process maps
    
  • Business and functional requirements
    
  • User stories and acceptance criteria
    
  • Business rules and decision logic
    
  • KPI and benefits frameworks
    
  • Requirements traceability matrices
    
  • Process and data-flow documentation
    
• Experience supporting workflow automation, intelligent automation, RPA, AI-enabled transformation, or digital process redesign initiatives.
  
• Demonstrated ability to quantify operational improvement opportunities and measure realized business benefits.
  
• Strong analytical skills and proficiency working with operational, financial, and performance data.
  
• Excellent facilitation, interviewing, written communication, and executive presentation skills.
  
• Ability to translate between business stakeholders and technical delivery teams.
  
• Experience working within Agile, iterative, hybrid, or structured implementation methodologies.
  

Preferred Qualifications 

• Direct experience with credit union Deposit Operations or comparable retail banking operations.
  
• Experience with ACH, deposit exceptions, remote deposit capture, payments, card servicing, disputes, reconciliations, or account servicing.
  
• Experience working with Credit Union Service Organizations (CUSOs), shared-service organizations, or multi-entity operating environments.
  
• Familiarity with core banking, workflow, document-management, payment, and financial-services platforms.
  
• Experience supporting AI, generative AI, machine learning, document intelligence, workflow orchestration, or automation implementations.
  
• Familiarity with multi-tenant operating models and requirements for data and workflow segregation across financial institutions.
  
• Understanding of financial-services regulatory and control frameworks, including GLBA and NCUA requirements.
  
• Experience supporting technology implementations requiring model governance, human-in-the-loop controls, auditability, or explainability.
  
• CBAP, CCBA, PMI-PBA, Lean Six Sigma, or comparable business-analysis/process-improvement certification preferred.
  

Key Deliverables 

The Lead Business Analyst may be responsible for or contribute materially to the following engagement deliverables:

• Current-state process inventory and process maps
  
• Business capability and operational assessment
  
• Deposit Operations process analysis
  
• Process-volume, effort, cycle-time, error, and cost baseline
  
• Automation opportunity assessment and prioritization
  
• Future-state process designs
  
• Business, functional, integration, data, reporting, and control requirements
  
• Business rules and exception-handling requirements
  
• User stories and acceptance criteria
  
• Requirements traceability matrix
  
• KPI and success-measurement framework
  
• Benefits realization model
  
• Operational risk and mitigation inputs
  
• Organizational impact and change-readiness analysis
  
• User acceptance testing scenarios and validation results
  
• Decision-gate documentation and implementation recommendations
  

Success Profile 

Success in this role requires an individual who can move comfortably between detailed operational analysis and executive-level business outcomes. The Senior Business Analyst must be able to understand how work is actually performed today, challenge processes constructively, translate operational knowledge into structured requirements, and identify where automation can deliver measurable value without compromising member service, regulatory compliance, or operational control.

The successful candidate will bring a client-centered, evidence-based approach to transformation, helping the organization build confidence in new AI and automation capabilities while creating processes and requirements that can scale across additional credit unions and business lines.