Senior Systems Analyst

Stable Kernel • Atlanta, GA

3d • Hybrid

About The Position

Stable Kernel is seeking a Senior Systems Analyst for a client's Quality Engineering team, which is integrating into Platform Engineering with an Architecture focus. This role is a hands-on, relationship-first position requiring a solid technical foundation. The analyst will be responsible for translating priorities into actionable work, maintaining a clear engineering pipeline, and facilitating communication between teams. The ideal candidate will be credible with engineers, curious about new domains, and highly organized. This role reports directly to the Senior Systems Analyst Practice Lead at Stable Kernel. The primary goal is to create a unified team of three pods (Platform Engineering, Quality Engineering, and Architecture) with a consistently organized and refined backlog, enabling engineers to focus on their core tasks and freeing up senior leaders for strategic initiatives. Success will be measured by improved backlog hygiene, reduced refinement burden on senior staff, early identification of cross-pod dependencies, and clear communication channels for stakeholders. Long-term, this role aims to increase business impact by ensuring engineers have clear, prioritized work, improve quality of life through a predictable delivery rhythm, and enhance strategic positioning by allowing the Product Owner to focus on external discovery and relationships.

Requirements

• 8 or more years in systems analysis, business analysis, backlog management, or delivery coordination within software engineering teams.
• Strong Jira skills and hands-on agile refinement experience: preparing items, driving clarity on scope and acceptance criteria, and keeping a backlog healthy across multiple workstreams.
• Demonstrated ability to work across several technical teams at once and shift context quickly while keeping a clear picture of what each is doing.
• Comfortable working directly with engineers and technical stakeholders; able to learn a new technical domain, ask effective questions, and follow a technical conversation well enough to capture decisions and route open questions.
• Technical fluency that lets you understand platform, quality, and architecture work at a working level. Engineer-level depth is not required, but genuine technical curiosity and credibility with engineering audiences are.
• Proactive consultant mindset: visible, responsive, organized, and able to build relationships and drive follow-through without extensive direction.
• Clear, audience-aware communication: able to summarize status, surface risk, and frame decisions at the right level for engineers, leads, and stakeholders.
• Local to Atlanta and genuinely excited, not merely willing, to be in person with the client team on a regular basis.
• Employment visa must be effective for at least 3 years from the date of application.

Nice To Haves

• Experience supporting platform engineering, quality engineering, architecture, or developer-tooling teams.
• Exposure to test infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, performance and load testing, or internal developer platforms.
• A degree, training, or certification in computer science or a related technical field.
• Consulting or client services background with trusted-advisor experience.

Responsibilities

• Manage and maintain the team backlog in Jira across all three pods, ensuring engineers have a clear, continuous pipeline of prioritized, well-defined work.
• Lead or support refinement for one or more workstreams, preparing items in advance, driving clarity on acceptance criteria and dependencies, and reducing the refinement load on senior team leaders.
• Translate priorities, needs, and decisions into actionable work items that engineers can pick up without additional interpretation.
• Keep the combined Jira project organized and current so the team always knows what is coming next.
• Work across the Platform, Quality Engineering, and Architecture pods, shifting context quickly and maintaining a working understanding of what each is building and why.
• Identify cross-pod dependencies, integration points, and risks early and bring them to the right people with clear context and impact.
• Maintain a high-level understanding of the technical work and route detailed questions to the appropriate engineer when you cannot answer them yourself.
• Recognize repeatable patterns in requests and workflows and surface them as opportunities for the team.
• Be on site regularly with the client team, building close, day-to-day working relationships with the engineering leaders, product lead, and engineers across all three pods.
• Join stakeholder and pilot-team conversations as needed to gather context, clarify requirements, and help move decisions forward without waiting for a formal handoff.
• Serve as a reliable point of contact for the team: visible, responsive, and able to give an accurate answer or find the person who can.
• Represent Stable Kernel with professionalism and a proactive consultant mindset in every interaction.
• Support team-level decision-making by framing options, trade-offs, and implications clearly for the Product Owner and engineering leads.
• Track open questions, blockers, and follow-ups to closure so nothing stalls between conversations.
• Contribute to combined ceremonies and the team's delivery cadence as a participant and organizer, not as a full-time facilitator.
• Report status accurately and proactively, raising unforeseen complexity and risk before it affects delivery.

Benefits

• Company-subsidized health, vision, and dental plan premium options beginning on the first day of employment
• 401k with above-average company matching
• Fully paid Group Life, Short and Long Term Disability, and AD&D insurance
• Optional Flexible Spending Account, Dependent Care Flexible Spending Account, and Health Savings Account participation
• Voluntary Life, Critical Illness, and Accident insurance
• EAP and Health Advocacy program available at no cost to employees and their dependents
• $1500-3000 annual industry educational budget
• Paid time off and paid holidays
• Access to Perks at Work program featuring a variety of discounted products and services

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed