Senior Risk Business Analyst

Sun Life•Waterloo, ON

2d•CA$80,000 - CA$128,000•Hybrid

About The Position

At Sun Life, we work together, share common values, and support growth and achievement. Corporate Risk Operations helps protect and enhance stakeholder value by enabling effective risk management practices across business segments. As part of this team, you will help drive change, innovation and operational excellence. You will support risk management practices, contribute to digital solutions, including AI-enabled initiatives, and help the team deliver practical improvements in a fast-changing environment.

Requirements

5 or more years of progressive experience as a Business Analyst, Business Systems Analyst, in a Product Owner support role or in a similar role with increasing responsibility.
7 or more years of related experience is preferred for data-heavy or complex delivery environments.
A bachelor’s degree, college diploma or equivalent practical experience.
Experience working in Agile environments such as Scrum, Kanban or SAFe, including Agile ceremonies, backlog refinement, prioritization and iterative delivery.
Hands-on experience using JIRA or equivalent Agile delivery tools, including writing or interpreting epics, user stories, acceptance criteria and backlog status information.
Experience working with cross-functional teams, including business users, vendors, development, QA, project managers, data enablement and technology partners.
Strong interpersonal, facilitation and relationship-building skills, with the ability to communicate clearly with technical and business audiences.
Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, including the ability to assess root causes, identify gaps, develop recommendations and communicate practical options.
Ability to adapt to changing requirements, priorities and delivery constraints while maintaining clarity, transparency and momentum.
Working knowledge of risk management, compliance expectations, operational controls, data quality, reporting, or financial services or insurance business processes is an asset.

Nice To Haves

Experience in third-party risk management, technology and cyber risk management, Archer, ServiceNow, risk operations, operational risk, control management or related enterprise risk areas.
Experience with data visualization, analytics, reporting, dashboard development, data lakes, data warehouses, source-to-target mapping, SQL or data validation.
BA, BSA, BSC, CBAP, PMI-PBA, Agile, Scrum, Kanban or SAFe training or certification, or equivalent practical experience with these concepts.
Experience supporting AI, automation, workflow, digital transformation or process optimization initiatives.
Experience with stakeholder management, customer communication, matrix organizations, vendors and multi-site virtual teams.

Responsibilities

Lead and facilitate requirement discovery sessions with stakeholders, ensuring scope, objectives, assumptions, dependencies, risks and success criteria are clearly understood and documented.
Elicit, analyze, validate and communicate business, functional, non-functional, data, reporting and compliance requirements in a clear and practical way.
Partner with the Product Owner to define, refine and prioritize Agile backlog items, including epics, user stories, acceptance criteria, dependencies, business value and release considerations.
Support Agile ceremonies such as sprint planning, daily stand-ups, sprint reviews, retrospectives, backlog refinement and roadmap discussions.
Use Agile techniques such as user story mapping, personas, story point estimation, process mapping and prioritization frameworks to support alignment and delivery quality.
Translate business needs into data attributes, source-to-target mapping considerations, reporting needs, data validation expectations and data quality requirements, where applicable.
Analyze business processes, systems, data flows and operational challenges to identify opportunities for improvement, optimization, automation and innovation.
Develop recommendations and options to address complex business challenges while balancing risk, compliance, stakeholder impact, operational feasibility and delivery capacity.
Work with business users, peers, vendors, technology partners and leaders to plan, implement, test, roll out and support new or enhanced applications and processes.
Review and contribute to high-level designs, test strategies, test plans, user documentation, training material and rollout plans to ensure alignment with business requirements and desired outcomes.
Triage business requests, gather high-level estimates or sizing input, maintain visibility into priorities and support regular huddles to track and allocate work.
Identify gaps, risks, interdependencies and decision points, document mitigation strategies and escalate issues or decisions in a timely and structured way.
Maintain and organize the delivery backlog in JIRA or equivalent tools.
Write, review and interpret epics, user stories, acceptance criteria, business rules, data requirements and implementation notes.
Prepare concise updates on progress, risks, blockers, decision needs and upcoming priorities.
Help ensure backlog items reflect measurable business outcomes, customer impacts, compliance expectations, operational readiness needs and delivery dependencies.
Facilitate alignment between the Product Owner, business stakeholders and delivery teams by clarifying expectations, challenging assumptions and recommending practical alternatives.
Create and update JIRA automation rules and AI agents to help improve productivity with business stakeholders, delivery teams and other key partners.
Support budget and expense tracking by helping monitor performance, reporting variances and providing explanations where needed.
Contribute to application risk assessments, risk-based testing, control documentation and operational readiness activities, as required.
Work with data enablement and technology partners to understand data lineage, database concepts, source-to-target mapping, data validation and data quality considerations.
Use data, process evidence, stakeholder feedback and system behaviour to develop clear insights and communicate findings to both technical and non-technical audiences.
Support data transformation, reporting, dashboarding, analytics and digital solution initiatives that contribute to Corporate Risk Operations outcomes.