Location: Hybrid – home working with occasional travel for meetings (London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds)
Department: IT – Transformation Team
About the Role
We’re looking for an experienced Senior Business Analyst to join our Transformation Team and help shape and continuously improve products and services across QA Higher Education.
Working as part of a cross-functional product and technology team, you’ll connect business needs, user outcomes and technology delivery, ensuring opportunities are clearly understood, prioritised and translated into valuable, testable improvements.
You’ll work across discovery, delivery and ongoing product improvement, using evidence from users, operational data and stakeholders to define problems, shape solutions and help ensure change delivers measurable value.
What You’ll Be Doing
- Partner with users, business owners, technology teams and suppliers to understand product goals, customer needs and operational challenges.
- Plan and lead discovery activities including interviews, workshops, observation, process analysis and data analysis.
- Define clear problem statements, user and business outcomes, assumptions, constraints, dependencies and measurable success criteria.
- Work with Product Managers and Product Owners to shape product goals, prioritise opportunities and maintain an outcome-focused backlog.
- Help shape product options and minimum viable approaches, balancing user value, business value, risk, cost and technical feasibility.
- Create and maintain user journeys, service and process maps, business rules, data flows and specifications where required.
- Create, refine and prioritise backlog items, including user stories, acceptance criteria and non-functional requirements.
- Support delivery teams through iterative design, build and testing, helping to resolve questions and validate outcomes.
- Contribute to product ceremonies including planning, refinement, reviews and retrospectives.
- Support user acceptance, operational readiness and adoption activities.
- Track outcomes and benefits following release, using evidence and feedback to identify further improvements.
- Ensure privacy, security, accessibility, reporting and data governance requirements are considered throughout discovery and delivery.
- Maintain clear and proportionate product and analysis documentation.
About You
You’ll be an experienced Business Analyst who is comfortable working within cross-functional product or agile delivery teams.
You’ll have strong analytical and problem-solving skills and be able to distinguish genuine business and user needs from proposed solutions. You’ll be confident using both qualitative and quantitative evidence to support decisions and shape priorities.
You’ll also be comfortable working with stakeholders across business and technology teams, facilitating workshops and communicating complex business and technical concepts clearly to different audiences.
Your Experience
We’re looking for experience in:
- Providing business analysis within cross-functional product or agile delivery teams.
- Working with external partners or vendors.
- Supporting discovery and framing business and user problems and opportunities.
- Validating assumptions and helping shape minimum viable approaches.
- Creating and refining outcome-focused backlogs, user stories and acceptance criteria.
- Working iteratively from initial discovery through delivery, release, adoption and continuous improvement.
- Using user feedback, operational insight and data to inform priorities and evaluate outcomes.
- Stakeholder engagement and workshop facilitation.
- Building shared understanding across business and technology teams.
Your Knowledge & Skills
You’ll bring:
- Strong problem-framing, analytical and critical-thinking skills.
- Experience of user-centred discovery, requirements elicitation and process analysis.
- The ability to create effective user stories and acceptance criteria.
- Knowledge of product management and agile ways of working.
- An understanding of discovery, outcome-based prioritisation, iterative delivery, feedback loops and continuous improvement.
- Knowledge of analysis and modelling techniques, including current and future-state processes, user journeys, business rules, information flows and data structures.
- An understanding of product measures and benefits realisation.
- Strong facilitation, stakeholder management and collaborative decision-making skills.
- The ability to communicate complex business and technical concepts clearly.
- The ability to balance pace, quality, risk and proportionate documentation.
- Knowledge of customer relationship management, student, order management or finance systems and their implementation.
- A recognised qualification or certification in product management, agile product delivery or product-focused business analysis, such as Product Owner, Product Management or Agile Business Analysis.
- Equivalent practical experience working within cross-functional product teams will also be considered.
What You’ll Bring to QA
You’ll bring curiosity, creativity and a product mindset, with a focus on understanding user needs and delivering measurable outcomes.
You’ll be willing to test assumptions, learn from evidence and constructively challenge where appropriate, alongside strong communication, analytical and problem-solving skills, attention to detail and a collaborative approach to shared product ownership.
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Senior Business Analyst in Birmingham employer: QA Higher Education
QA Higher Education is an exceptional employer, offering a dynamic work culture that fosters collaboration and innovation within the finance team. Located in the vibrant city of London, employees benefit from professional growth opportunities, a supportive environment, and a commitment to maintaining work-life balance, making it an ideal place for those seeking meaningful and rewarding careers in finance.
