Principal Business Analyst, Data

Risepoint

About The Position

The Principal Business Analyst sits on the Enterprise Data team and partners with the marketing and operations analytics function. This role is the bridge between business questions and the data that answers them. You will work with marketing analytics operations and business users from the COO org to understand their key questions and KPIs, translate them into clear product requirements, and then partner with the enterprise data and marketing analytics teams to deliver data products (treated tables, semantic layer, reports, and dashboards) that generate the insights leaders need. Your value lies in framing the right questions, defining clear requirements, and ensuring that what is delivered truly answers them. You will need to influence and align stakeholders across functions, reconciling differing points of view to reach a unified set of metrics and a single source of truth, and partnering with executive sponsors when alignment is difficult to reach. You will have discretion to adjust priorities as new information emerges, communicating any changes to key stakeholders, and you'll connect individual requests to the bigger picture so that what gets delivered avoids rework and truly drives outcomes. If you enjoy solving business problems, working across teams, and turning data into decisions, this role is for you.

Requirements

8+ years of experience in business analysis, analytics, or a related role, including translating business needs into clear requirements.
Proven experience acting as the bridge between business stakeholders and technical or data teams.
Strong understanding of marketing analytics, operations KPIs, and performance measurement - enough to shape the right questions and define the right requirements.
Ability to read and interpret data and reporting and turn it into clear, actionable insights for business audiences.
Experience writing product requirements and user stories within an agile framework.
Experience running gap analyses and documenting current-state and future-state processes.
Excellent written and verbal communication; able to explain complex ideas simply to business partners.
Strong stakeholder management and cross-functional collaboration skills.
Growth mindset, high accountability, and the ability to operate with urgency in a fast-paced environment.
Bachelor’s degree in business, computer science, math, economics, engineering, or a related field.

Nice To Haves

Experience in a marketing analytics function, in a B2B and/or B2C context.
Experience working in a higher education environment.
Familiarity with data tools such as SQL, Python, dbt, Looker, or Tableau - enough to collaborate well with the data team (not to build).
Understanding of how dashboards, data models, and a semantic layer are built, so you can write clear, realistic requirements.
Experience with financial metrics and P&Ls.
Understanding of software development life cycle methodologies (Waterfall, Iterative, Agile).
Experience leading or mentoring analysts, or leading analytics projects end-to-end.

Responsibilities

Partner with marketing & operations analytics and business users to understand their key business questions and the KPIs that matter most, aligning stakeholders around a shared source of truth.
Translate those questions and KPIs into clear product requirements and user stories for reporting, dashboards, and analytics.
Drive cross-functional execution between business and data teams, ensuring coordinated delivery across workstreams, making sure requirements are understood and that what is delivered answers the original question, escalating to sponsors when alignment is hard to reach.
Own delivery of data products across teams, ensuring requirements and outputs are delivered end-to-end to provide clarity of how to address the needs and accelerate the time from need identified to solution delivered.
Own prioritization and sequencing of work across teams, making trade-off decisions aligned to business priorities, with discretion to reprioritize as new information emerges.
Run gap analyses to find where current data and reporting do not yet answer the business questions and lead the shaping of requirements to close those gaps.
Document current-state and future-state processes and reporting needs based on interviews with business stakeholders.
Help define a common set of terms, definitions, and KPIs to support a shared source of truth across teams.
Contribute insights and analysis to the regular operating cadence, including monthly performance reviews, board and investor materials, and budget, connecting individual work to the bigger picture.
Own delivery outcomes across workstreams, ensuring timely execution and resolution of issues impacting delivery.
Stay current on trends in data and analytics so you can ask sharper questions and shape better requirements.