Business Data Analyst

Simmonds Precision•Vergennes, VT

9h•Hybrid

About The Position

The Business Data Analyst bridges finance and business intelligence, turning data from the ERP and surrounding systems into reporting, analysis, and insight that leadership uses to run the business. This role is financial with a heavy focus on information technology skills: building and maintaining reports and dashboards, writing the SQL behind them, and then applying accounting and operational judgment to explain what the numbers actually mean. This position partners with finance, operations, supply chain and IT to establish trusted, consistent sources of truth for business performance. The analyst is expected to move from a leadership question to a validated answer independently, and to present findings clearly and concisely to both financial and non-financial audiences in an aerospace and defense manufacturing environment.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Business Analytics, Information Systems, Data Science, or a related field.
3–5 years of experience in financial analysis, business intelligence, or data analytics, preferably in a manufacturing environment.
Demonstrated experience building and maintaining production reports and dashboards in Power BI, Infor Birst, or a comparable enterprise BI platform.
Proficiency writing and tuning SQL to extract and transform data from relational databases.
Advanced Microsoft Excel skills, including complex formulas, pivot tables, Power Query, and financial modeling.
Experience extracting and interpreting data from an ERP system.
Ability to translate technical analysis into clear, actionable recommendations for non-technical stakeholders.
Must be a U.S. Person as defined under ITAR and EAR due to the nature of the work performed.

Nice To Haves

Hands-on experience with Infor Birst and Infor CloudSuite Industrial (SyteLine).
Experience in aerospace or defense manufacturing, including program-based accounting and familiarity with FAR/DFARS requirements.
Exposure to data warehouse concepts and dimensional modeling.
Experience with Python, R, VBA, or Power Automate for data preparation and process automation.
Professional certification such as CMA, CPA, or a business intelligence certification (e.g., Microsoft PL-300).

Responsibilities

Design, build, and maintain production reports and dashboards in Power BI or Infor Birst, from data source through to published visualization.
Write, optimize, and troubleshoot SQL against ERP tables, views, and reporting databases, including joins, aggregations, CTEs, and window functions.
Develop and maintain data models, calculated measures, and a documented data dictionary so that metric definitions are consistent across the business.
Manage report governance: refresh schedules, access and row-level security, version control, and retirement of redundant or manual reporting.
Analyze manufacturing cost performance including direct labor, material, overhead absorption, purchase price variance, scrap, rework, and yield.
Support standard cost development, annual cost rolls, and review of BOM, routing, and rate data for accuracy and reasonableness.
Perform margin analysis by program, product line, customer, and part number, and explain drivers behind period-over-period movement.
Build variance analysis that bridges actual to standard, plan, and forecast in a way operating leaders can act on.
Provide analytics supporting inventory valuation, excess and obsolete reserves, cycle count accuracy, and inventory turns.
Conduct ad hoc analysis supporting pricing, make-versus-buy, capacity planning, capital investment, and cost reduction initiatives.
Identify trends and anomalies in operational and financial data, investigate root cause, and quantify the financial impact of the opportunity or risk.
Build and maintain advanced Excel models using pivot tables, Power Query, Power Pivot, and scenario analysis to support planning and business cases.
Develop and track key performance indicators with operating leaders, ensuring measures tie back to reported financial results.
Partner with IT and ERP resources on data structures, master data quality, and system enhancements affecting reporting.
Reconcile and validate business intelligence outputs to the general ledger and ERP source data before results are published.
Document data lineage, business rules, and report logic so reporting is supportable and not dependent on a single individual.
Present analysis to site and business unit leadership in a clear, concise format that leads with the conclusion and supports it with evidence.
Work cross-functionally with operations, supply chain, quality, engineering, and program management to understand the processes behind the data.
Exercise appropriate judgment and discretion with confidential financial, customer, and employee data.