Senior Business Analyst, Finance

Group Summary

The Finance and Investments group is responsible for implementing and maintaining operating procedures designed to ensure rigorous stewardship of the foundation’s financial resources. We oversee the business processes that govern the foundation’s basic grantmaking and risk management; evaluate and improve the impact of the foundation’s grantmaking; and produce accurate and transparent financial analyses and reports. We also coordinate public-private partnerships across the different grantmaking areas to optimize effectiveness and share best practices, and we drive a number of special initiatives related to planning for substantial increases in long-term payout and overall growth.

Position Summary & Responsibilities

Do you consider yourself a ‘Constructive Challenger’? Do you have a history of partnering with your internal customers to drive greater value and challenge them to better outcomes?

We are looking for a Senior Business Analyst to join our Central FP&A, Financial Reporting team to constructively challenge and support the identification and delivery of information needs for the Foundation, specifically as it relates to financial management, portfolio management, and business performance management. This includes:

Serving as a liaison between business areas, central FP&A, and IT partners by understanding and critically evaluating business needs against system capabilities and organizational capacity.

Working with customers, project managers, technical resources, and other stakeholders to analyze needs, determine scope of solutions, and help define and deliver solutions that meet customer expectations.

Analyzing current business process, recommending improvements, and developing the business and functional requirements needed to ensure that the tools delivered, including technology solutions, meet the needs of the business.

Developing deep domain expertise of, and partnership with, business functions supported and IT delivery teams.

Assisting in the development of a multi-year strategy and implementation roadmap.

Providing direction and leadership on complex projects, including leading other analysts when necessary.

Duties may include any or all of the following:
Business Analysis – work with stakeholders to elicit, analyze, and document needs; develop business cases and/or project summaries; prepare needs analysis and problem definition; identify current state, desired future state, and gaps.

Solution Design – help guide teams to develop data, reporting, process, and technical solutions that support stakeholders’ goals and objectives; organize and lead prototype reviews, demos, and user acceptance reviews.

Change Management – provide assistance by consulting on and/or creating content for change management communications, training and education, and participating in in training sessions. Acting as an advocate for change in interactions with stakeholders and assisting them through the change process.

Project/Program Support – coordinate with project & program management to identify, plan, analyze and design methodology, scope, schedule, milestones, deliverables & resources. Work with stakeholders to refine & improve process to ensure effectiveness.

Relationship Building – develop deep understanding of customers, their work environment and strategic goals; identify their business challenges, provide thought partnership to define solution options; translate customer needs into business, functional, and technical requirements, workflow and process change documents. Build positive, constructive partnering relationships with key stakeholder groups, including senior leaders.

Assist in the creation of annual improvement plans and development of multi-year roadmaps.

Provide direction or oversight to work of other BAs on large or complex projects.

Reports to the Deputy Director of Financial Reporting.

Qualifications

Candidates must have demonstrated skills and/or experience in. Additional qualifications include:

Bachelor’s degree with 6-10 years of experience

Strong background in financial management and/or portfolio management

Strong working knowledge of financial reporting, managerial reporting, portfolio reporting, data elements, and the flow of information through business processes

Demonstrated problem-solving and critical thinking skills

Demonstrated success working in cross-functional teams in a dynamic organization requiring flexibility, patience, creativity, and the ability to adjust work style to match audience for unique business solutions and changing and/or conflicting priorities

Strong attention to detail coupled with ability to take a big picture and long term perspective on how solutions and trade-offs play into the overall strategy for data and reporting

Strong leadership skills including persistence, diplomacy, pragmatism, and flexibility

Strong facilitation skills, as this position must support and communicate a trade-off approach to requests, and gain agreement/consensus across teams on solutions and prioritization of needs

Ability to elicit and translate requests from customers into solid business requirements that solve for the business problem

Ability to track and report progress on efforts, set expectations with business customers and operational partners, and deliver within those expected timeframes (or communicate any changes)

Understanding of the various teams at the Foundation and their business processes that rely on or result in financial information

Understanding of IT solutions that support foundation transactions and working knowledge of their capabilities and limitations

This is a Limited Term Employee role as part of our parental leave program and targeted for 18 months starting in June/July 2017 , however the start and end dates for this assignment may change.

For internal candidates, you are required to have a conversation with your manager to confirm their support before you apply to this position. Managers have the right to decline a request to apply for a backfill position, regardless of tenure in role. With Manager Support and if selected for the role, internal FTEs will retain their FTE status during this stretch assignment.

As part of our standard hiring process for new employees, employment with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will be contingent upon successful completion of a background check.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is dedicated to the belief that all lives have equal value. We’re committed to creating a workplace where employees thrive both personally and professionally. We also believe our employees should reflect the rich diversity of the global populations we aim to serve-in race, gender, age, cultures and beliefs-and we support this diversity through all of our employment practices.

All applicants and employees who are drawn to serve the mission of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will enjoy equality of opportunity and fair treatment without regard to: