Senior Business Systems Analyst Supervisor

The ideal candidate is an experienced Business Analyst leader who excels in supporting large, complex tax and wage systems and guiding a team in a fast-paced, mission-critical environment. They are skilled at translating business needs into technical requirements, identifying process and system improvements, and collaborating with partners to deliver effective solutions. They understand the importance of maintaining accurate, reliable systems that support unemployment insurance benefits statewide and have experience working with highly visible platforms that impact employers, agency staff, and external customers. As a supervisor, they foster a positive team culture, set clear expectations, support staff development, and ensure high-quality service delivery while keeping essential systems running smoothly.

The Innovation & Technology Office, Information Technology Services Division (ITSD) of the Employment Security Department (ESD) manages, develops, supports, and maintains the agency’s computer systems, web technologies, network and data communications and the data warehouse. It also provides technical assistance for installation and operation of personal computers and software

This senior-level position provides leadership and direction for the Tax & Wage IT Systems Business System Analyst team. It oversees the daily work of the four Business System Analysts who support the Tax and Wage Systems. The incumbent manages services provided to internal and external customers, with a focus on the organization’s high-priority initiatives related to the Tax & Wage systems. The role ensures that the Tax & Wage systems used by supporting divisions and external customers are properly maintained and available to meet their business needs. This position also collaborates with internal and external business partners to design and document technical solutions by facilitating the definition of business requirements, identifying and recommending business process improvements, identifying system application enhancements, and maintaining system documentation.

Daily tasks may include, but are not limited to:

Lead, develop and mentor technical staff within the Tax & Wage IT Systems team

• Write performance expectations, conduct evaluations, ensure expectations are implemented effectively and provide feedback and evaluations to manager.
• Supervises staff, provides leadership, direction/guidance and mentorship to business analysts in business analysis best practices by providing advanced support in work-related activities answers questions on how to approach the work assignment.

• Strategically assign and balance workload to staff based on business priorities set through the UI governance process, adjusting assignments and schedules to maintain adequate staffing levels to ensure resources are appropriately utilized.
• Collects and independently analyze workload and operational data to improve efficiency and capacity, and team performance.
• Ensures assigned work and/or projects are completed on time following established procedures to ensure business priorities are met.

Perform business and technical requirements definition for small to large and highly complex application solutions

• Elicit business and technical requirements from product owner(s), key partners, and subject matter experts (business and technical) using interviews, document analysis, requirements meetings, prototypes, business process analysis, use cases or user stories, scenarios, tasks, workflow analysis and other techniques.
• Apply an incremental and iterative approach (Agile) approach to design and document technology and business process solutions.
• Lead requirements analysis and verification activities, ensuring that requirement statements are complete, consistent, concise, comprehensive, traceable, feasible, unambiguous and verifiable and that they conform to standards and the solution will meet customer needs and achieve business objectives.

• Validate, track and prioritize requirements to ensure business needs are met throughout the project.
• Manage changes to baselined requirements through effective and appropriate application of change control processes and tools.

Lead and manage the Tax & Wage IT Systems Business System Analysts, overseeing the facilitating, elicitation, analyzing, testing, and documentation of business requirements and enhancements for technology systems

• Oversee the planning, documentation, and software requirement standards.
• Independently research, implements, and stays current with best practices in business analysis, ensuring policies and procedures are established and followed.

• Provides leadership, management, and accountability for multiple high risk/high impact and small to large scale projects assigned to the business analysts.
• Ensures project requirements are properly initiated, planned, documented, and aligned with agency and division priorities.

• Review project artifacts including business requirements and design documents are succinct, accurate and timely. Identify problem areas, and devise and deliver solutions to enhance quality of service to ensure consistency and ongoing maintenance and operations of the agency’s UI Portfolio.

Responsible for change management for highly complex enhancements to Tax & Wage Systems

• Serve as the technical expert and agency liaison to internal/external key partners (product owners, business owners, developers, other agency IT and business professionals, testers, system operations, principal engineers and database administrators) in advising and assessing the scope of system changes necessary to implement Tax & Wage system modifications.
• Analyze and approve new system capabilities prior to their implementation ensuring ESD’s agency standards are adhered to and consistently applied.

• Conduct in-depth systems analysis to identify risks, gaps, dependencies, and alternative solutions for proposed changes.
• Determine the size, complexity, and dependencies of change requests by reviewing business rules, user stories, use cases, and related artifacts.
• Lead the requirement elicitation sessions with internal and external business partners to gather new requirements for the change request or change management process.

Troubleshoot system failures reported by business staff and external key partners within Tax & Wage Systems

• Acts as the subject matter expert on system functionality, features, system issues and unresolved system problems that cannot be solved by lower-level staff either independently or in conjunction with business partners for Tax & Wage IT Systems.
• Independently complete high-level analysis of issues related to all Tax & Wage IT Systems functional areas to recognize and troubleshoot critical application and system failures, research and provide recommendations for different alternative fixes.

• Use Azure Dev OPS (ADO) to log user stories/bugs to ensure the business partners are notified with detailed requirements and procedures if an enhancement is necessary or provides training to ensure business understands how the system was designed to function.
• Participate with other IT specialists in root cause analysis, which includes application of business rules, workflow issues, and internal/external interfaces.
• Provide final approval on high-risk data fixes and system code changes by collaborating closely with IT developers, analysts, architects and testers on various system functionalities to verify and validate code and data fix changes.

Provide high level system analysis and leadership to support software quality assurance activities for complex or high-risk Tax & Wage System projects

• Validate testing strategy for user acceptance criteria.
• Lead triage of system defects with support team to determine priority of work items.

• Validate and prioritize minimum viable product (MVP) requirements to ensure business needs are met.
• Facilitate the modification process with business key partners inorder to ensure system documentation is updated to support the identified changes.
• Participate in production implementation verification and validating system quality.

Lead or participate in project governance to the project team, sponsor, and key partners

• Lead project or collaborate with the project manager and project team members to develop project deliverables.
• Manage conflicts, issues and changes in order to ensure agreement on the solution scope.

• Create culture that guarantees collaborative working relationships and effective communication between project team members which includes both technical and business resources.
• Provide input to the detailed work plan and sequence of activities needed to successfully complete the project, which includes review of the overall schedule.
• Participate in weekly project meetings, daily stand-up status meetings and feedback sessions with project team to ensure project remains on schedule.

Perform business and technical requirements definition

• Facilitate definition and elicitation of business requirements working with multiple business key partners and subject matter experts, using an incremental and iterative approach (Agile methodology).
• Translate business and functional requirements and specifications into technical requirements.

• Independently meet with business subject matter experts to clarify and refine requirements Convert requirements into various types of models or diagrams using the BABOK techniques (i.e., process mapping, decision tables, value streams and data flows using Microsoft Visio) to describe aspects of the requirements.
• Comply with standards of the software development life cycle and follow strategies, plans and procedures within information technology software.
• Develop and maintain requirement traceability matrix for requirements management.

To request a detailed position description, click here.

Required Qualifications:

Experience-Based Pathway

Option 1:

Eleven (11) years of IT experience in leading customers in elicitation and management of requirements, and documenting technical and functional requirements, software specifications and system diagrams

Option 2:

Bachelor’s degree in computer science or closely related field and seven (7) years of IT experience in leading customers in elicitation and management of requirements, and documenting technical and functional requirements, software specifications and system diagrams

Option 3:

Associate’s degree and nine (9)years of *IT experience in leading customers in elicitation and management of requirements, and documenting technical and functional requirements, software specifications, and system diagrams

Option 4:

A combination of education and/or relevant IT experience totaling at least eleven (11) years

• Progressive experience in leading requirement elicitation and management of requirements, and documenting technical and functional requirements, software specifications and system diagrams.
• Progressive experience in, and demonstrated ability to analyze highly complex, high visibility technical issues and requests, presenting concise, relevant, and well-documented findings in alignment with industry best practice as well as internal policy and procedures.

• Progressive experience in, and demonstrated aptitude for, independently developing and monitoring highly technical system documentation standards.
• Progressive experience in and demonstrated experience troubleshooting malfunctions and failures of highly complex applications and systems and participating in defining mitigation and resolution strategies.

• Progressive experience in, and demonstrated aptitude for, independently developing and maintaining process standards for system requirements and documentation in the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) processes such as Waterfall, Agile or other methodologies and processes.
• Demonstrated experience troubleshooting malfunctions and failures of highly complex applications and systems and participating in defining mitigation and resolution strategies.
• Working level knowledge of human resource management principles, practices, and procedures.

Desirable/Preferred Qualifications:

• Professional certifications in business analysis
• Experience with Microsoft SQL

• Experience applying the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK) techniques
• Experience working in an Agile Environment

Ability to demonstrate and adhere to the following ESD Employee Competencies:

• Accountability: Accept personal responsibility for work and actions.
• Communication Effectiveness: Effectively convey ideas and information.
• Critical Thinking: Use purposeful and reflective judgment to process, analyze, interpret, explain, evaluate, illustrate, and compare information.
• Customer Service: Commit to providing value-added services to external and internal customers.

• Inclusiveness: Actively contributes to a work environment that embraces diversity and uses diverse perspectives to help achieve organizational goals.
• Interpersonal abilities: The ability to relate to your co-workers, mitigate conflict, and inspire others to participate.
• Security:Preserve the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of ESD systems and data in accordance with the policies, procedures, and best practices established and maintained by the ESD information security team. Immediately report any Security event, incident, or breach in reporting.

Ability to demonstrate and adhere to the following ESD Supervisor Competencies:

• Conflict Management:Effectively work with others to understand interests and actively strive to achieve agreements or resolve differences in a timely manner.
• Continuous Learning: Demonstrate an ongoing commitment to learning and self-improvement.
• Decisiveness: Make timely, logical decisions.
• Influence: Produce positive action or results through modeling, discussion, conference, clarity, and consensus.
• Leveraging Diversity: Effectively foster a diverse workforce.
• People Management: Effectively manage staff resources in a consistent and equitable manner.

Required equity competencies:

• The ability to take action to learn and grow.
• The ability to take action to meet the needs of others.

Special Requirements/Conditions of Employment:
Must be able to pass Unemployment Insurance (UI) & Paid Family and Medical Leave (PFML) claim and fraud check.

Please submit ONLY the required documents as noted below and ensure all Personal Identifying Information (PII) such as Social Security numbers etc. are edited out of your materials for privacy.

Attach your Resume and Cover Letter with yourOnline Application through the "Add Attachments" field. A resume will not substitute for the "work experience" section of the application or vice versa. Applications with blank fields, or supplemental question responses with comments such as "see attachments" may be considered incomplete.

Any documents uploaded through this platform will be securely transmitted electronically to support application review.

Ouragency's mission and values drive every decision that we make, determine how we interact with others, and are at the core of who we are. We value Access, Love, Belonging, Equity, and Stewardship. We understand that a work environment that respects your work/life balance is key; that's why many of our positions are eligible for flexible work schedules and teleworking opportunities. Through support, value, and trust, our employees are empowered to grow and develop into their best self.

Opportunity for All
We strive to create a working environment that includes and respects cultural, ethnic, racial, religious, sexual orientation, and gender identity diversity. Women, racial and ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, people over 40 years of age, people with religious beliefs, veterans or people with military status, and people of all sexual orientations and gender identities are encouraged to apply.

The Employment Security Department is an equal opportunity employer/program. Auxiliary aids and services are available upon request to individuals with disabilities.

If you are a person needing assistance in the application process, if you need this job announcement in an alternate format, or if you have general questions about this opportunity, please contact Cheyenne Pernitesor the Talent Acquisition Team, prior to the recruitment closing. If you are having technical difficulties creating, accessing, or completing your application, please contact careershelp@des.wa.gov or (360) 664-1960 or toll free (877) 664-1960, or Washington Relay 711.

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