Senior Business Analyst

Northwestern Mutual•Franklin, WI

About The Position

Northwestern Mutual is seeking a Senior Business Analyst to advance its Service Strategy by identifying opportunities, defining solutions, and delivering capabilities that improve experiences for clients, field representatives, and home office teams. The role works closely with Product, Engineering, Operations, Analytics, and business stakeholders to uncover customer and business needs, facilitate discovery, evaluate opportunities, and build alignment. It contributes to future-state servicing experiences and supports operational efficiency, automation, scalability, and customer-focused improvements. The successful candidate is comfortable with ambiguity and complex business problems, and brings analytical and systems thinking, curiosity, adaptability, and the ability to influence across organizational boundaries. The role helps teams learn quickly and deliver measurable business outcomes through collaborative, data-driven work. It also uses AI-enabled tools and emerging technologies to improve analysis, decision-making, delivery effectiveness, and operational efficiency.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree or equivalent professional experience.
At least 5 years of Business Analyst, Product Analyst, or related experience delivering measurable business outcomes.
Demonstrated ability to make data-driven decisions and recommendations.
Experience working in Agile, product-focused, or cross-functional delivery environments.
Strong analytical thinking, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills.
Ability to operate effectively in ambiguous environments and bring structure to evolving problems and opportunities.
Experience facilitating stakeholder discussions, discovery sessions, workshops, and alignment activities.
Ability to influence decisions and build consensus without direct authority.
Strong communication, relationship-building, and collaboration skills.
Demonstrated initiative, ownership, and bias toward action.
Ability to balance strategic thinking with attention to detail and execution.
Curiosity, learning agility, adaptability, and comfort working in new or evolving ways.
Experience using data, insights, and business context to guide recommendations and prioritization decisions.

Nice To Haves

Financial services experience.
Insurance servicing experience.
Annuities experience.
Experience partnering closely with Product Management and Engineering teams.
Experience supporting business transformation, modernization, automation, or process improvement initiatives.
Experience leveraging AI-enabled tools to improve analysis or delivery effectiveness.
Contact center, servicing, or operations experience.

Responsibilities

Define success measures, establish baseline performance metrics, and evaluate outcomes against Service Strategy objectives and business value.
Act as a strategic thought partner by focusing on business problems, root causes, and opportunities rather than only documenting requirements.
Lead discovery efforts, stakeholder discussions, and process analysis to identify opportunities and define future-state experiences.
Apply systems thinking to understand how processes, technology, products, data, and organizational decisions affect the broader servicing ecosystem.
Facilitate workshops, process mapping sessions, and alignment discussions to turn ambiguity into actionable solutions.
Use quantitative and qualitative data to identify trends, evaluate opportunities, and support prioritization decisions.
Translate complex business needs into requirements, user stories, process flows, acceptance criteria, and solution recommendations.
Partner with Product, Engineering, Operations, Analytics, and business stakeholders to support roadmap priorities and delivery efforts.
Influence stakeholders and delivery teams across organizational boundaries and drive decisions without direct authority.
Support rapid test-and-learn approaches by identifying opportunities, validating assumptions, incorporating feedback, and measuring outcomes.
Use AI-enabled tools and emerging technologies to improve analysis, decision-making, delivery effectiveness, and operational efficiency.
Contribute to business analysis practices, continuous improvement, and knowledge sharing across teams.
Communicate effectively with working teams, business partners, leadership, and executives, tailoring information to each audience.