Senior Specialist, Business Analysis (Cost Optimization Initiative) in London

Save the Children International has an exciting opportunity for a Senior Specialist, Business Analysis – Cost Optimization Initiative to join our global team.

Team and Role Purpose

Save the Children is launching the Cost Optimisation Initiative to improve organizational sustainability, strengthen value for money, and maximize resources available for children and programme delivery. The aim is to build a simpler, smarter, and more efficient Save the Children that delivers greater impact for children through better use of every resource entrusted to us.

Role purpose

The Senior Business Analyst (BA) will serve as a key delivery resource within the organization-wide Cost Management Initiative, supporting the identification, design, and implementation of sustainable cost reduction and operational efficiency opportunities across Global Teams and Country Offices. The role will lead sophisticated business analysis, operational diagnostics, process redesign, requirements engineering, and transformation design activities across multiple global functions including Finance, Supply Chain, HR, Awards, Operations, Shared Services, and Enterprise Systems. The Senior BA will play a critical role in shaping future-state operating models, identifying strategic efficiency opportunities, facilitating executive-level decision-making, and translating business priorities into implementable transformation initiatives. The role requires deep expertise in enterprise transformation, organizational redesign, finance operations, process optimization, and stakeholder influence within highly matrixed organizations.

Principal Accountabilities

• Lead Enterprise Business Analysis and Operational Diagnostics: Drive end-to-end business analysis across the Cost Optimisation initiative, conducting enterprise-wide operational diagnostics to identify structural inefficiencies, duplication, non-value-adding activities, and optimisation opportunities across support functions and Country Offices.
• Design Future-State Processes and Operating Models: Lead current and future-state process mapping using BPMN and industry-standard methodologies, designing future-state business processes aligned to lean operational principles and developing high-quality transformation artefacts including process maps, service catalogues, operating model documentation, RACI frameworks, and governance models.
• Lead Strategic Requirements Engineering and Solution Design: Lead the elicitation, analysis, validation, and management of complex business and functional requirements, translating strategic objectives into actionable solution requirements, implementation roadmaps, and high-quality documentation including user stories, business rules, use cases, data requirements, and traceability matrices.
• Drive Cost Analytics and Operational Efficiency Assessment: Lead analytical assessments of staffing structures, PSC allocations, operational expenditures, and service delivery costs across global operations, developing robust LOE models, benchmarking analyses, and efficiency baselines to support strategic decision-making and opportunity sizing.
• Establish Benefits Realisation and Performance Tracking Frameworks: Partner with Finance, Enterprise Analytics, HR, and Operations teams to validate savings assumptions, develop business cases and investment justifications, and establish frameworks for tracking efficiency realisation, operational performance improvements, and transformation outcomes.
• Facilitate Stakeholder Engagement and Alignment: Facilitate complex cross-functional workshops, design sessions, and working groups, driving alignment and consensus across stakeholders with differing operational priorities and presenting analytical findings and transformation recommendations credibly to senior leadership audiences.
• Support Digital Enablement and Automation Opportunities: Collaborate with technology, analytics, and ERP teams to assess and prioritise automation and digital enablement opportunities, ensuring proposed solutions are scalable, integrated, and aligned to enterprise architecture standards and transformation objectives.
• Contribute to Programme Governance and Delivery Coordination: Support the Project Lead in coordinating interconnected transformation workstreams and managing delivery dependencies, maintaining rigorous governance disciplines including RAID logs, decision registers, action trackers, and documentation repositories.
• Prepare Reporting Materials: Work with the Snr. Project Lead to produce high-quality executive presentations, comms packs, analysis summaries, and status reports, contributing to dashboard development and strategic performance monitoring for senior leadership and governance forums.
• Manage Transformation Risks and Support Organisational Readiness: Proactively identify and escalate transformation risks, delivery blockers, and organisational readiness concerns, supporting change impact assessments, stakeholder engagement planning, implementation planning, and transition readiness activities.

Experience and Skills

Essential

• Significant progressive experience in Business Analysis, Enterprise Transformation, Finance Transformation, ERP-enabled transformation, or Operational Excellence initiatives, with a track record of delivering high-quality analytical and transformation outputs in complex organisational environments.
• Proven track record supporting or leading large-scale enterprise transformation programmes within International NGOs, global matrix organisations, consulting environments, or multinational organisations, with demonstrated ability to navigate complex stakeholder structures and competing operational priorities.
• Demonstrated experience operating at senior stakeholder and executive engagement level.
• Strong experience across enterprise business analysis, operating model design, business process re-engineering, BPMN methodologies, organisational redesign, requirements engineering, transformation delivery, and cross-functional stakeholder management.
• Demonstrated understanding of NGO operating models, including cost allocation methodologies, donor compliance environments, shared services structures, Country Office operations, and programme support cost management.
• Experience supporting enterprise systems and ERP transformation initiatives including Oracle, Unit4 Business World (Agresso), SAP, or equivalent platforms, with the ability to translate business requirements into scalable, integrated system solutions.
• Strong analytical capability with demonstrated experience interpreting complex operational, financial, and workforce data to identify efficiency opportunities, validate transformation assumptions, and support evidence-based decision-making.
• Proven ability to work effectively within highly ambiguous, politically sensitive, and fast-evolving transformation environments, maintaining rigour and delivery quality under pressure and with limited supervision.

Desirable

• Experience working across both headquarters or global teams and decentralised Country Office operations, with direct exposure to the operational realities of field-based humanitarian or development contexts.
• Formal certification or practical knowledge of Lean Six Sigma, DMAIC, continuous improvement, or operational excellence methodologies as applied to process or organisational redesign.
• Exposure to enterprise analytics platforms, AI-enabled process optimisation, or intelligent automation initiatives in a transformation context.
• Experience developing or contributing to shared services design, service catalogue frameworks, or global service delivery model transformation.

Education and Qualifications

Essential

• Bachelor’s degree in information systems or related field
• Business Analysis & Requirements Engineering
• CBAP (Certified Business Analysis Professional – IIBA)
• PMI-PBA (Professional in Business Analysis – PMI)
• Process Excellence & Transformation
• Lean Six Sigma
• BPMN 2.0 Certification or formal process modelling training

Desirable

• MBA (with focus on Strategy, Finance, or Operations) or MSc in Finance, Business Analytics, Strategy, or Management Science.

Working at Save the Children International

Save the Children is the world's leading organisation for children, employing ~25,000 staff. We save children's lives. We fight for their rights. We help them fulfil their potential. Through our work in 116 countries, we put the most deprived and marginalised children first. We know that great people make a great organisation, and that our employees play a crucial role in helping us achieve our ambitions for children. We value our people and offer a meaningful and rewarding career, along with a collaborative and inclusive environment where ambition, creativity, and integrity are highly valued. The work here is challenging but is also immensely rewarding. At Save the Children, you will be in good company, working with talented, like-minded individuals who are determined to ensure that all children survive, learn, and are protected. Your contribution will help ensure children's voices are heard at the highest levels, and that we achieve our global strategy, Ambition for Children 2030, and reach every last child.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Equal Opportunities

DEI is core to our vision, values and global strategy. Save the Children is committed to creating a truly diverse, equitable and inclusive organisation, and one which will support us in our vision to ensure every child attains the right to survival, protection, development, and participation. We are committed to equal employment opportunities, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, race, colour, ethnic origin, nationality, disability, marital or civil partnership status, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, caring or parental responsibilities, age, or beliefs and religion. We are committed to diversifying our staff to better represent the communities we serve and actively welcome underrepresented groups to apply. Reasonable adjustments will be made should any candidate invited to interview require this.

Application Information

Please attach a copy of your CV and cover letter with your application. A full copy of the role profile can be found at SCI Careers. It is recommended that you save a copy of the role profile as it will no longer be available after the advert closes. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis and the job advert may be closed earlier than advertised subject to the volume of suitable applicants. Please submit your application at your earliest convenience to avoid disappointment.

Due to the high volume of applications we receive, only shortlisted candidates will be contacted. Candidates who are successfully shortlisted should expect to hear from us within 2 weeks of the advert deadline.

Our Recruitment Process

Application review by our recruiting team based on your CV and cover letter. Two-stage competency-based interviews with the hiring team. Some recruitment may include an additional assessment or case study stage, or a third stage interview. If successful, you will receive a conditional offer of employment, followed by your contract subject to passing background checks.

We need to keep children and adults safe so our selection process includes rigorous background checks and reflects our commitment to the protection of children and adults from abuse. All employees are expected to carry out their duties in accordance with our Code of Conduct and all policies and procedures relating to Anti-Harassment, Health and Safety, Safeguarding, and DEI and Equal Opportunities.

Save the Children does not charge a fee at any stage of the recruitment process.