Principal Business Analyst

Cfa Institute•Charlottesville, VA

About The Position

Do you thrive in complexity, enjoy shaping solutions before the path is clear, and want your work to influence decisions that truly matter? As a Principal Business Analyst, you'll partner with leaders and teams across the organization to bring clarity to ambiguity, drive enterprise-wide solutions, and ensure initiatives deliver real value. You'll help set the standard for how analysis is done, mentor others, and leave a lasting mark on how the organization thinks, plans, and evolves. The Principal Business Analyst provides expert-level business analysis leadership across complex initiatives, enterprise-scale programs, and cross-functional domains. This position is responsible for leading requirements strategy, advanced process and systems analysis, enterprise business analysis, feasibility studies, and governance of business analysis practices. The Principal Business Analyst applies deep analytical expertise, systems thinking, and structured problem-solving to ambiguous, multi-dimensional challenges. The role collaborates closely with senior leaders, architects, engineers, data teams, and business stakeholders to define solution scope, guide decision-making, and ensure technology investments maximize organizational value. This position strengthens organizational maturity in analysis, discovery, change strategy, and continuous improvement.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience required; advanced degree preferred.
6+ years of experience in business analysis, systems analysis, data analysis or related disciplines; experience leading complex or enterprise-level initiatives strongly preferred.
Expert-level proficiency in requirements elicitation, process modeling, data analysis, feasibility studies, and business case development.
Demonstrated ability to operate independently on highly complex analytical problems.
Advanced experience working in Agile or hybrid environments.
Strong communication, facilitation, negotiation, and advisory skills.
Ability to navigate ambiguity, drive clarity, and support strategic decision-making.
Familiarity with modern data platforms and tools (e.g. Snowflake, SQL, Tableau), database design, SaaS/PaaS systems, and enterprise solution architecture.
Fluency in English required.

Responsibilities

Lead enterprise-level requirements elicitation, analysis, validation, and traceability across highly complex or multi-system initiatives.
Translate strategic business needs into detailed functional and technical specifications.
Establish requirements quality standards, verification processes, and change-control practices.
Guide product teams and stakeholders in prioritization and solution evaluation.
Document and model complex as-is and to-be processes, data flows, integrations, and organizational impacts.
Conduct advanced gap analyses and define transition states aligned to business and technology strategy.
Perform feasibility assessments and cost-benefit analyses to support investment decisions.
Interpret enterprise business needs and recommend solution approaches at business-unit or organizational scale.
Lead data analysis activities, including synthesis of insights from diverse sources to identify trends, risks, and opportunities.
Define data requirements, influence data architecture and modeling discussions, and contribute to reporting specifications.
Advise on data governance, data integrity, and database specifications.
Serve as the analytical lead during discovery, scoping, solution evaluation, and roadmap definition.
Partner with UX, architecture, software engineering, data engineering, data science, and QA to translate requirements into actionable build specifications.
Support release planning, enterprise readiness assessment, user acceptance testing, and post-launch validation.
Facilitate complex workshops, decision-making forums, and cross-functional alignment sessions.
Present findings and strategic recommendations to senior leaders.
Lead governance processes for business analysis activities including standards, metrics, and quality assessments.
Identify opportunities to optimize processes, reduce friction, and improve analytical rigor across the organization.