Business Analyst

Ascentt•Plano, TX

About The Position

The Business Analyst plays a key role in the continued development and client enablement of an enterprise platform supporting complex business planning and delivery processes. The role works closely with product leadership, client stakeholders, development teams, and QA teams to understand business needs, translate them into product requirements, refine requirements with delivery teams, support testing, and validate functionality with users. The Business Analyst leads client and stakeholder working sessions, converts product direction and client needs into functional requirements and user stories, and maintains traceability from business needs through testing and feedback. The role collaborates with distributed development and QA teams, supports realistic client evaluation and UAT, and helps triage feedback into defects, usability improvements, configuration needs, client-specific requirements, or reusable product enhancements. It also provides functional readiness recommendations and develops business-focused evaluation scenarios for AI-assisted capabilities. Story readiness is achieved collaboratively with the development team, and this role complements rather than replaces the dedicated QA function. Experience with AI-enabled products is a differentiating capability. The role does not require AI engineering or data science expertise, but calls for the ability or strong motivation to understand how AI-enabled functionality differs from deterministic behavior and how it can be specified, evaluated, and validated from a business and user perspective.

Requirements

At least 8 years of experience in Business Analysis, Product Business Analysis, Business Systems Analysis, or a comparable role supporting enterprise technology products or solutions.
Strong experience analyzing business processes and translating complex business needs into structured functional requirements.
Ability to rapidly develop functional understanding of complex enterprise business processes without requiring deep prior expertise in a specific business domain.
Demonstrated experience leading substantive client or stakeholder working sessions through questioning, analysis, and constructive challenge.
Strong experience developing user stories and clear, testable acceptance criteria.
Hands-on proficiency with Jira in Agile product-development environments.
Demonstrated experience collaborating with software development teams to refine and groom requirements.
Strong functional understanding of software development and testing lifecycles.
Experience developing test scenarios, reviewing QA test cases, supporting functional testing, and participating in UAT.
Ability to identify business-process gaps, edge cases, exceptions, dependencies, risks, and impacts.
Experience working with distributed teams, including onsite and offshore development and QA teams.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including workshop facilitation, presentation, and stakeholder management.
Ability to synthesize complex or unstructured discussions into clear decisions, requirements, and actions.
Bachelor's degree in Business, Information Systems, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related discipline.

Nice To Haves

Experience supporting the development or implementation of enterprise SaaS or configurable software products.
Experience working simultaneously across product development and client implementation or pilot initiatives.
Experience with AI-enabled, Generative AI, or intelligent workflow applications, including evaluating AI capabilities from a business and user perspective.
Domain exposure to enterprise IT delivery, including portfolio or project management, IT intake and governance, vendor management, procurement, consulting, or PMO operations.
Experience with process-modeling, journey-mapping, wireframing, or collaboration tools such as Visio, Lucidchart, Miro, Figma, or similar platforms.
CBAP, PMI-PBA, or comparable Business Analysis certification.

Responsibilities

Lead working sessions with client stakeholders and subject matter experts, including requirements workshops, application walkthroughs, feedback sessions, and capability reviews; investigate underlying needs, challenge assumptions, and identify gaps and edge cases.
Translate product direction, design concepts, and client needs into functional requirements, user journeys, process flows, business rules, and user stories with clear business context and testable acceptance criteria.
Maintain traceability from business needs through requirements, stories, testing, and client feedback.
Collaborate with onsite and offshore development teams to refine the backlog, provide functional clarification during development, and preserve business intent as solutions are designed and built.
Partner with QA to define business scenarios and expected outcomes, review test coverage beyond standard scenarios, and selectively validate important workflows hands-on.
Prepare client working teams to evaluate functionality in realistic scenarios and lead UAT and application validation sessions.
Capture, categorize, and triage client feedback, distinguish among defects and different types of enhancements or requirements, and drive findings to resolution with named owners.
Provide product leadership with functional readiness recommendations for features and pilots, and analysis that informs product refinement, positioning, and go-to-market messaging.
Develop functional expectations and evaluation scenarios for AI-assisted capabilities, considering output quality, consistency, explainability, guardrails, and human-review patterns.
Work collaboratively with the development team to achieve story readiness while complementing the dedicated QA function.