Business Data Analyst

Job Description

The Principal Business Data Analyst leads collaborations with business teams to determine needs and opportunities for leveraging data in support of business monitoring and decision management. This position mentors others to apply a range of analytics and statistical techniques to generate relevant and accurate insights through data exploration, modeling, analysis, and mining. Communicates findings effectively using visualizations, dashboards, and presentations with the goal of optimizing business decisions and outcomes.

• Lead engagements with business leaders and staff to clarify needs and define business requirements for strategic data use; where possible anticipates and proposes opportunities for analysis and exploration in support of business optimization and decision-making
• Support decision-makers by performing data exploration, analysis and statistical inference to identify and interpret trends and patterns in datasets and detect influences, opportunities and risks
• Develop forecasts, regression models, what-if scenarios and recommendations in consultation with leaders to support strategic/tactical planning and operational decision-making
• Lead the creation of dashboards, visualizations and reports to support business performance monitoring, automating where possible, to support stakeholders’ ability to be data driven
• Effectively communicates insights for business leaders and colleagues in order to advance the collective intelligence of the organization
• Work collaboratively with the enterprise analytics and information management team to articulate business needs for new/revised data models and views/access to the data
• Produce business-specific workflows and data models for analysis using enterprise analytics and data management tools, including the integration of external data sets that are approved for use
• Serve iterative business needs by developing prototype models that join large volumes of data across multiple data domains to deliver views for use by other analysts; understands the modeling techniques for ensuring integrity and responsiveness in those deliverables
• Identify business opportunities for machine learning and collaborates with Data Scientists to deliver value for the business unit
• Contribute to data inventory and stewardship efforts, including contributions to metadata management, data profiling, data quality remediation and data cleansing
• Maintain high standards and adhere to all enterprise policies and guidelines regarding data security and privacy, data management, data quality and data governance; regard data as an enterprise asset that is to be protected and used both strategically and appropriately

Job Specifications

• Bachelor’s degree in statistics, analytics, mathematics, economics, computer science, or related functional area; or equivalent experience
• 6+ years of demonstrated data analytics experience including querying and analyzing operational and/or financial data, generating insights and communicating those effectively with colleagues and leaders
• Prior experience in successfully leading analytics projects in one or more of the following domains/business functions: Financial Management and Forecasting, Risk Assessment, Insurance Utilization and Pricing, Supply Chain Optimization, Retail Management, eCommerce Management, Consumer Behavior Analysis, Marketing Optimization or Healthcare Management
• Proficient in building complex data queries using SQL in order to join, filter, cleanse,, and aggregate data; understanding of how no/low-code applications apply SQL concepts to do the same
• Proficient in designing data workflows and business-oriented data models against relational database structures
• Proficient in visualization and dashboard design techniques to create interfaces that monitor business performance against KPIs and highlight trends/patterns
• Proficient in using data exploration and analysis platforms such as PowerBI, Cognos Analytics, Tableau, SAS or similar
• Experience applying statistical modeling to evaluate complex business problems and develop forecasting and what-if scenarios
• Possesses strategic skills, business acumen, and curiosity to envision opportunities, document requirements, and collaborate for successful outcomes
• Capable of mentoring others to elevate the collective skills of the team
• Familiarity with Data Science techniques and experience in the use of notebooks (i.e., Jupyter) with programming languages like Python and R
• Excellent written and verbal communication, presentation, and analytical skills
• For roles that are remote (i.e., Work From Home (WFM)) or hybrid (i.e., partial onsite at a VSP location and WFM), must demonstrate a high level of engagement in virtual environments, including maintaining camera presence during meetings to support effective communication and team alignment

Preferred Skills

• Demonstrated ability to identify trends, determine root causes, evaluate performance variation, and develop meaningful quality insights from large, complex, fragmented datasets
• Healthcare quality and operational analytics knowledge
• Data storytelling and executive communication skills, capable of translating technical findings into concise, actionable insights
• Data governance expertise, including data validation, metric definition, reporting standards, and regulatory considerations