Technical Business Analyst

Simone Development • New York, NY

23h

About The Position

Simon & Schuster is modernizing the core systems that support order management, fulfillment, partner integration, and financial transactions, replacing long-established technology with modern .NET and SQL solutions using an AI-assisted approach. The Technical Business Analyst connects business needs with hands-on data investigation by mapping processes, clarifying requirements, and translating legacy system behavior into specifications and acceptance criteria for developers.

The role centers on SQL-based comparison of existing and replacement outputs, investigation of differences, and support for business validation before production cutover. The analyst owns comparison rules, test data, first-pass reconciliation, and validation evidence, while developers own the automation framework and application implementation. This is a technical analysis role involving targeted business and data validation, rather than a dedicated test-automation engineering position.

Requirements

• At least 5 years of relevant technical business analysis, systems analysis, or data-focused QA experience, including requirements analysis and hands-on validation of production business systems.
• Strong SQL skills, including independently writing queries with joins, aggregation, and set comparisons, and recognizing data-grain, duplicate-record, missing-data, and timing issues that can distort reconciliation.
• Ability to translate stakeholder needs into process maps, functional and technical specifications, data definitions, and actionable acceptance criteria.
• Experience investigating reports, batch processing, ETL/data pipelines, or migrations by comparing datasets and explaining discrepancies.
• Experience preparing test datasets, running established automated checks, coordinating UAT, and tracking issues through resolution.
• Clear communication with business users and engineers, supported by concise specifications, reproducible issue reports, and evidence-based conclusions.
• Experience using AI tools for analysis or testing, with the judgment to validate their output independently.

Nice To Haves

• Legacy-modernization or system-migration experience using parallel-run validation.
• Microsoft SQL Server, stored procedures, and reusable reconciliation queries.
• Experience with order processing, fulfillment, supply-chain, financial transactions, or EDI.
• Exposure to COBOL-era batch environments or AutoSys; COBOL development skills are not required.
• C#/.NET or scripting familiarity for collaboration on existing validation checks.

Responsibilities

• Work with business stakeholders to document current and future workflows, business rules, reporting needs, change impacts, and testable acceptance criteria.
• Investigate batch processes, interfaces, SQL logic, and reports with developers and legacy specialists; document data mappings, dependencies, and exceptions.
• Run established parallel-run comparisons, investigate record-level differences, and distinguish defects from timing artifacts or intended changes.
• Maintain representative datasets, expected results, and comparison queries; work with developers to extend validation coverage and retain regression checks for resolved defects.
• Check report calculations, totals, completeness, and exchanged data against agreed requirements; provide reproducible findings and follow issues through retesting.
• Organize business testing, maintain requirements-to-test traceability, and summarize results and unresolved issues to inform business owners' acceptance decisions.
• Apply AI-assisted analysis, SQL generation, and documentation, checking generated output against actual system behavior and approved business rules.

What This Job Offers

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