Senior Business Analyst (ITS) - Grants

The Opportunity

The University of Southern California (USC) is currently seeking a Senior Business Analyst (ITS) - Grants to join our Application Services team. The Senior Business Analyst (ITS) - Grants will support enterprise applications and business processes related to grants management, research administration, and associated financial functions.

The Senior Business Analyst (ITS) - Grants will support university operations, services, and processes related to grants management, with a focus on business analysis, solution design, testing, training, issue resolution, and continuous improvement.

In this role, you will focus on developing requirements, conceptualizing designs, and recommending business processes that support core organizational functions for the University in partnership with the Department of Contracts and Grants (DCG), Sponsored Projects Accounting (SPA), and relevant administrative units.

In addition, this role will communicate with a broad range of partners and stakeholders, including faculty and staff; document future-state processes; implement and test solutions; support adoption of new systems and processes through training; and stay current on system capabilities and industry best practices.

Job Accountabilities

• Leads planning, design, and conception of university applications’ functionality. Owns requirements, conceptualizes designs, and influences future-state business processes in support of core organizational functions for the university. Communicates and presents recommended improvements and solutions to business processes and decision-making rationale. Delivers engaging experiences that balance customer needs, business goals, and technical realities by working collaboratively across the organization, with fellow analysts and others (e.g., user experience researchers, product managers, designers, developers)

• Develops Human Centered Design (HCD) processes and approaches to deliver a broad range of sustainable solutions. Engages in standard business analysis methodology, outlining problems, opportunities, and solutions, and identifies process-improvement efforts across the organization

• Builds and delivers design solutions that meet customer needs and expectations. Leads user research efforts to gain understanding of customer and stakeholder pain points, challenges, and needs

• Delivers high-quality project analysis documentation (e.g. business requirements, scope matrices, use cases, future state proposals, user acceptance technology [UAT] plans). Actively mitigates risk by owning tasks, resources, and changes. Enables the release management process by anticipating risks and providing strategic recommendations for releases

• Leads collaborative engagement efforts with a broad range of business partners and stakeholders, including students, faculty, and staff, to productively and comprehensively solve issues. Utilizes leading practices to effectively anticipate, prioritize, analyze, and articulate problems, evaluate and document problem alternatives, manage constraints, and suggest interim and long-term solutions

• Maintains currency on emerging technologies and approaches, leveraging the latest industry knowledge to drive innovation and continuous improvement for the organization. Seek opportunities for innovation and maximizing system functionality by continually developing skills, knowledge, and abilities

• Collaborates with team members and management, implementing effective solutions to support the Product Strategy and Design department’s vision. Maintains currency with technology, standards, and best practices. Supports process improvement efforts within the team and across the ITS organization

• Aids the cultivation of an inclusive environment and a culture of trust and transparency, sharing information broadly, openly, and deliberately. Builds and maintains collaborative relationships with diverse groups of peers, team members, and leadership. Actively embodies ITS values and behaviors (e.g., accountability, ethics, best-in-class customer service)

• Perform other duties as assigned or requested. The university reserves the right to add or change duties at any time

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or combined experience/education as substitute for minimum education

• 5 years of relevant professional experience

• Proven record of delivering end-to-end, user-centered products, considering stakeholder requirements, user research, market analysis, data, customer feedback, and technical constraints or opportunities.

• Experience leading requirement-gathering interviews or sessions

• Proven experience utilizing analytics tools to measure results of