Technical Business Analyst

Simon & Schuster•New York, NY

2d•$120,000 - $150,000

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 implementable specifications and acceptance criteria. Strong SQL skills are central to comparing existing and replacement outputs, explaining differences, and helping business users validate results before production cutover. The role owns comparison rules, test data, first-pass reconciliation, and validation evidence, while collaborating with developers who own the automation framework and application implementation. It is a technical analysis role involving targeted business and data validation, rather than a dedicated test-automation engineering position. Simon & Schuster is an equal opportunity employer. The position includes medical, dental, vision, 401(k), life insurance, disability benefits, tuition assistance, PTO, and access to a Broad Based Ownership program. The hiring salary range varies by location and job-related factors; no specific salary figures are provided.

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.
Experience with Microsoft SQL Server, stored procedures, and reusable reconciliation queries.
Experience in 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 collaborating 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; collaborate with developers to extend validation coverage and retain regression checks for resolved defects.
Validate 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 support informed business acceptance decisions.
Apply AI-assisted analysis, SQL generation, and documentation, checking generated output against actual system behavior and approved business rules.