Senior Business Analyst - Overland Park, United States - MSI GuaranteedWeather

Description

"Climate is what on average we expect, weather is what we actually get."

(Herbertson 1901)

MSIGW is on the forefront of applied climate change research, operating in the confluent regime of science, technology, business, and insurance. MSIGW benefits from a unique fusion of a solid foundation provided by Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Ltd. and Hannover Re (each recognized global leaders in insurance/reinsurance) and an Insurtech spirit powered by big data exploration, predictive analytics, financial engineering, and pure science.

Climate change is one of the major challenges facing society today, universally impacting individuals, businesses, and governments. At MSIGW, we are committed to understanding and providing effective risk management solutions across the entire spectrum of weather perils (hurricanes, hail, tornadoes, flood, drought, wind/solar renewable power production, extreme temperature, snowfall, etc.), industries (renewable energy, conventional energy, agriculture, leisure/travel, construction, transportation, industry, banking, etc.) and geographies.

MSIGW is a proven team/organization, operating in the weather risk management domain for nearly 20 years. Building from this successful legacy, MSIGW has identified the need to pivot from its traditional business strategy, and is seeking to aggressively innovate in the weather index insurance space through rapid design and deployment of never-before offered products. To be successful, the company will combine the ever-expanding global atmospheric and oceanic observational capabilities (time, space, and parameter) with the scalability/ubiquitous distribution provided by an international, digital weather index insurance platform (web and mobile). The resulting union of science and risk transfer will provide users with an enhanced understanding of the threats of climate change (specific to their business) and provide options for users to protect against such risks using weather index insurance. We are looking for a candidate to join us as a key contributor to the genesis of this revolutionary application.

At MSIGW, you have the opportunity to be a pioneer on the challenging frontier of climate change risk management/adaptation. You can build an exciting career with rewarding work; create positive and lasting impacts on business and society; and find the support, coaching, training, and creative freedom to advance your career.

SUMMARY OF POSITION

We are looking for a senior business analyst to support the development of our next generation of weather/climate risk management software products. In this role, you will be an important part of new software/platform implementations from start to go-live, and will work with project management, developers, QA, UAT, and client stakeholders to achieve our desired system/platform functionality. No two days will be the same, but the primary responsibility of this position is to own the process of configuration and change management from initial requirements gathering all the way to going live with our software/platform. You will create detailed functional designs, using Agile methodologies and tools; story writing and validation including conditions of satisfaction.

Goals and Day to Day Responsibilities:

· Manage agile process through DevOps, Jira (or comparable platform) providing dashboard metrics and executive level briefings weekly/as needed.

· Ensure production releases are on-time 80% of the time or greater.

· Ensure a low threshold of bugs prior to any production release through end-to- end User Acceptance Testing (UAT).

· Prompt delivery of meeting minutes, status reports, and post-project evaluations.

· Develop creative solutions for software development team based on complete analysis of complex problems in the context of user needs.

· Completes tasks required for platform development and delivery to production.

· Participate in user meetings to get a better understanding of user ideas and issues.

· Participate in user requirements meetings to understand, capture, and validate new requirements for development/modifications/enhancements.

· Analyze business process/requirements and develop corresponding process and data flows.

· Rapidly become and serve as a product knowledge expert during project planning meetings.

· Responsible for researching and refining functional requirements as well as communicating directly with users in collaboration with Application Architect and business team.

· Create detailed functional designs, using Agile methodologies and tools; story writing and then apply business analytics and reporting; validation including conditions of satisfaction.

· Review, comment, follow-up and target defects and enhancement requests.

· Develop dashboards in Excel using Pivot Tables, Power Pivot. Automation of tasks using macros, excel packages.

· Offer in-depth line of questioning to uncover barriers, resistance, and overall software usage.

· Analyze complex problems, identify outliers, interpret user needs, and develop creative solutions for software development team.

· Translate business processes to visual workflow documents.

· Develop and communicate requirements documentation for client-specific software configurations.

· Assist with testing strategies, conditions, and evaluation of expected results.

· Work with IT team to transform existing solutions to new methodology and technology.

· Working with the data scientist when necessary, understand data standards and identify data abnormalities. Instill data quality in all solutions delivered.

· Leverage collaboration tools for requirements gathering, design, project development and deployment.

· Data Translations: Retrieve and reformat data from various databases or sources, working in to support data scientist.

Project Management Responsibilities:

· Backlog maintenance through proper story prioritization.

· Take ownership of the delivery of features and capabilities through the development process using Azure DevOps.

· Deliver meeting minutes, status reports, and post-project evaluations as required including obtaining work break down and effort estimates from development team members and evaluate individual/teamwork product quality and quantity.

· Coordinates the development team, holding kick-off meetings and progress meetings to ensure the team meets the established project scope, deliverables, schedule and budget.

· Proactively identifies areas of potential risk (internally or externally) and crises and implements procedures to reduce exposure.

· Conduct regular user/client briefings. Submits a monthly progress report, as necessary.

· Analyze project labor hours, profitability, revenue, and multipliers on an ongoing basis, but no less than monthly.

· Monitors the work performed by design/development team to ensure it remains within the authorized scope of services.

· Communicates with management when additional fees/development resources are required. Pursues contract change orders for out-of-scope items.

Job Qualifications and Skills Required:

· Preferred bachelor's degree in a technology/software engineering/science field (Computer, Information Systems, Math, Statistics, Science).

· Ability to manage a variety of technical and management tasks.

· Ability to communicate, using various methods, often and effectively with project teams and clients.

· Ability to motivate teams to collaborate and produce high quality materials.

· Ability to make formal presentations to corporate management, project teams and our clients.

· Excellent communication and interpersonal skills and experience managing or directing project teams.

· Ability to lead with a high degree of emotional intelligence and ethics.

· Demonstrated proficiency in analyzing data to derive business insights and support performance improvement initiatives.

· Proficiency in MS Access, MS Excel, PowerBi and other MS products (Visio, Word, Project). Experience with Power Pivot is a plus.

· Uses rigorous logic and methods to solve difficult problems with effective solutions.

· Ability to perform independently using business applications, databases, data viewing/extraction tools and reports.

· Ability to multitask and adhere to project schedule and prioritize. Adapt to rapidly changing deadlines and tasks.

· Superior documentation and organizational skills.

· Demonstrate strong written and verbal communication.

· Understanding and participating in the software development lifecycle.

· Experience with Browser apps – SPA (single-page application), Angular, TypeScript, JavaScript, HTML/DOM, caching, shared state

· Process Management experience: SDLC, Agile/Lean Process

· Foreign language proficiency a plus

Experience Required:

· Must have at least five years related work experience in software product development that included writing requirements and acceptance criteria on an agile, enterprise software development team.

· Experience working in transitional agile organizations where process and procedure may be evolving a plus.

· Experience working with and managing external development teams.

· Experience with ad-hoc reporting, dashboards, and metrics development.

· Experience gathering requirements for executive level reporting.

· Experience with business process mapping, process improvement and re-engineering.

MSIGW is an equal opportunity employer. We consider all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, citizenship, sex, gender identity and/or expression, sexual orientation, veteran's status, age or disability.