Senior Risk Business Analyst

Sun Life•Waterloo, ON

2d•CA$80,000 - CA$128,000•Hybrid

About The Position

The Senior Risk Business Analyst will make a meaningful contribution to Sun Life’s Corporate Risk Operations team by combining business analysis expertise, technical acumen, risk awareness, and diplomatic facilitation. This role will elicit, analyze, verify, and communicate business, functional, non-functional, data, and reporting requirements to support quality solutions aligned with business objectives and compliance expectations. The successful candidate will act as a bridge between business stakeholders, data enablement partners, artificial intelligence (AI) teams, technology teams, vendors, and the Product Owner. They will work with the Agile technology team to convert business needs into clear requirements, user stories, data attributes, and delivery-ready backlog items while supporting Agile ceremonies and iterative delivery.

Requirements

Third-party Risk Management, Technology and Cyber Risk Management, Archer, ServiceNow, risk operations, operational risk, control management, or related enterprise risk experience.
Data visualization, analytics, reporting, dashboard development, data lake, data warehouse, source-to-target mapping, SQL, or data validation experience.
BA, BSA, BSC, CBAP, PMI-PBA, Agile, Scrum, Kanban, or SAFe training or certification, or demonstrated practical experience with these concepts.
Experience supporting AI, automation, workflow, digital transformation, or process optimization initiatives.
Experience with customer communication, stakeholder management, matrix organizations, vendors, and multi-site virtual teams.

Responsibilities

Lead and facilitate requirement discovery sessions with stakeholders at all levels, ensuring scope, objectives, assumptions, dependencies, risks, and success criteria are understood and documented.
Elicit, analyze, validate, and communicate business, functional, non-functional, data, reporting, and compliance requirements in clear language that supports quality solution delivery.
Collaborate 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, with a focus on business readiness and value delivery.
Apply Agile techniques such as user story mapping, personas, story point estimation, process mapping, and prioritization frameworks to improve stakeholder 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 pain points to identify opportunities for process 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.
Partner with business users, peers, vendors, technology partners, and leadership teams to plan, implement, test, roll out, and support new or enhanced applications and processes.
Review and/or develop high-level designs, test strategies, test plans, user documentation, training material, and rollout plans to confirm alignment with business requirements and desired outcomes.
Triage business requests, gather high-level estimates or sizing input, maintain visibility into delivery priorities, and support regular huddles to track, prioritize, and allocate work effectively.
Identify gaps, risks, interdependencies, and decision points; document mitigation strategies and escalate issues or decisions in a timely and structured manner.
Maintain and organize the delivery backlog in JIRA or equivalent tooling, ensuring items are business-ready, appropriately sequenced, and aligned to objectives.
Write, review, and interpret epics, user stories, acceptance criteria, business rules, data requirements, and implementation notes for clarity and completeness.
Support roadmap planning and status updates by preparing concise summaries of 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 increase productivity with business stakeholders, delivery teams, and other key stakeholders.
Understand and monitor budget/expense performance and reporting for variance tracking and explanations.
Use deep knowledge of risk management, regulatory expectations, and operational controls to partner with business stakeholders in defining, enhancing and implementing effective risk management processes.
Support application risk assessments, risk-based testing, control-related 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 challenges.
Apply strong analytical judgment to draw conclusions from data, process evidence, stakeholder feedback, and system behavior, then communicate findings to technical and non-technical audiences.
Contribute to data transformation, reporting, dashboarding, analytics, and digital solution initiatives where they support risk operations outcomes.
Bring sufficient technical fluency to collaborate effectively with IT partners while keeping role accountability grounded in business analysis, risk operations, and Product Owner support.