Principal IT Business Analyst

Together, we’re working to welcome millions more passengers, while ensuring aviation can continue to be a force for good by leading global efforts in sustainability. At Heathrow, you can be part of this – providing solutions that make every journey better for millions each year. That means ensuring we meet the changing needs of the passengers, colleagues and partners who use our airport to work, travel, trade, shop, eat, explore and connect.

Our Solutions team covers project management, process improvement, business change, technology, cyber defence, masterplanning, infrastructure and procurement. It brings together people with the skills to deliver prestigious and often large-scale projects, from transforming terminals to making big reductions in our carbon emissions.

With an average Capex profile of circa £120m pa, strong business analysis and requirements practices are fundamental to the functionality, resilience, usability, and maintainability of the technology at Heathrow. The breadth of our work includes business critical applications that are essential to the running of our Airport and delivery of infrastructure and network services that support our operation, airlines, and business partners to create a great experience for our passengers and generate growth opportunities.

It is critical that these IT systems meet the diverse functional needs of all the airport stakeholders and meet the high standards we expect regarding resilience and cyber security. The Principal Business Analyst will work with the ‘Heads of’ within the IT department, Senior Delivery Leads and Delivery Leads to lead a Business Analysis Team that can deliver world class business analysis services, including pre-project shaping, operating model definition, stakeholder analysis and requirements management.

They will lead a Centre of Excellence to provide guidance documentation, processes and standards. They will lead and mentor Business Analysts (Heathrow and supplier). They will assure the quality of business analysis activities implemented by programmes and projects to ensure cost effective delivery of quality systems that will enable transformational change.

The Principal Business Analyst may focus on understanding business needs with a specific Programme or large project to identify the business drivers, structure thinking and be able to scope pragmatic solutions to satisfy those needs and deliver the associated benefits. In guiding and advising the business to help them develop their requirements, the Principal Business Analyst must be able to establish credibility with stakeholders at all levels and be confident to challenge and influence decision making.

They will ensure that the ‘domain’ Business Analysts have skills and experience that match the software and delivery model(s) being used in that area. These may include but not be limited to: Agile (DAD, Scrum, Kanban, CI/CD, DevOps), Waterfall, CMMI & combined Infrastructure (ICS)/IT projects.

Furthermore, the Principal Business Analyst will drive the use of the appropriate tooling (such as Azure DevOps/Modern Requirements) within the Business Analysis Community, providing guidance and support to facilitate standardisation of use across the IT department. To set standards and define business analysis processes for use across all IT activities, programmes and projects, ensuring they are easy to use and fit for purpose. This will include collecting lessons learnt and continually improving the processes and templates and providing the in-house business analysis knowledge continuity / body of knowledge.

To lead the Business Analysis Team, and manage, mentor and direct Business Analysts (Heathrow and supplier) working on projects and programmes. Responsible for developing an overview of Business Analysis capability and demand to ensure appropriate resources are matched to overall project demand.

Your role will involve:

• To have a full understanding of business analysis resourcing, that understand the business issues and challenges, plus the skills available in the Business Analysis Community so that they can look to ensure that the right Business Analyst is assigned to projects.
• Quality assures business analyst deliverables (those relating to requirements, benefits, use cases, benefits, business case etc) produced by Business Analysts (Heathrow and supplier) to ensure that they are consistent and complete, as well as reusing existing artifacts where appropriate.
• Work with Business Analysts to identify the most appropriate tools and techniques to achieve the desired results and ensuring that these meet the Heathrow standards.
• On assigned programme(s) and projects use a wide variety of business analysis techniques and tools to successfully structure problems, elicit and document requirements, document as-is and to-be states, while ensuring traceability of requirements throughout lifecycle.
• Support the Delivery Lead in production of gateway deliverables, where required.
• Building relationships with senior stakeholders and understand their business challenges to be able to drive out root requirements and shape feasible, pragmatic technology solutions that can deliver the desired business outcomes and contribute to the long-term strategy at Heathrow.
• Where required, the Principal Business Analyst will undertake Project and/or Programme activities as part of the wider Business Analyst resource.

These Skills Are Essential:

• Significant experience in requirements and analysis on large scale and/or multi project environments.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills required, including a thorough understanding of how to interpret customer business outcomes and requirements.
• Strong stakeholder and relationship management skills, tactful diplomat, assists in the facilitation of team and client meetings and a team player working across multiple virtual teams.
• Great communicator (oral, written and presentation) able to deliver difficult/sensitive information to a diverse group including Executives, Managers, and Subject Matter Experts.
• Ability to respond to in a rapidly changing business environment and to successfully engage in multiple initiatives simultaneously and to prioritise work accordingly.
• Experience of the Azure DevOps toolset with the Modern Requirements extension.

Desirable:

• Knowledge of the airport business and airline processes.
• Educated to degree level or equivalent.
• Ideally BCS Chartered Institute for IT Business Analysis Certifications or IIBA International Institute of Business Analysis Certifications.

There’s something so special about working at the world’s most iconic airport. Its sights. Its sounds. Its constant air of excitement. Heathrow is an amazing backdrop to a career filled with unique opportunities. Every day, you’ll discover a world full of fresh possibilities and end the day buzzing with stories to tell, as you encounter people from all cultures, nationalities and experiences. A world full of pride for what we do and no end of exciting career prospects to explore. It brings out the best in all of us. And inspires everyone to deliver on our ambitious plans.

We offer competitive salaries and excellent benefits that will support you now and in the future. As well as performance-based annual bonuses and our longer-term Share in Success Bonus plans, we also offer generous annual leave allowances and market-leading pensions. With family friendly policies, access to private health insurance and a wide range of wellbeing tools, we’ll support you to be at your best inside and outside work. And of course, we’ll provide varied learning and development opportunities too. Here you’ll find everything you need for a fulfilling career journey that can take you in exciting directions.

Our Hybrid working approach offers the opportunity for colleagues in some roles to work from home for an average of two days a week, providing the flexibility to work in an agile way whilst ensuring we deliver for the operational needs of Heathrow. Working arrangements vary from team to team and will be confirmed during the recruitment process. You’ll need to be based in the UK and within a commutable distance to Heathrow.

As an equal opportunities employer, we encourage applications from all. We believe that diverse talent makes us stronger – not least because we welcome passengers from all corners of the globe, every single day. Heathrow is an accessible place to work. With five diversity networks, we champion inclusivity and celebrate individuality.