Job Summary

Polaris is seeking an experienced Business Analyst – Data & Analytics to support the delivery of enterprise data, analytics, reporting, AI, and data platform initiatives. This role serves as an extension of the Product Owner by partnering closely with business stakeholders, data engineers, data modelers, QA engineers, architects, and analytics teams to translate business needs into clear, actionable requirements and delivery artifacts.

The Business Analyst is responsible for eliciting, documenting, analyzing, and managing business, functional, data, and reporting requirements across a portfolio of Data & Analytics products, including Enterprise Data Warehouses (EDW), data lakes, curated data products, semantic models, and metric stores. This role will create Business Requirements Documents (BRDs), process flows, source-to-target requirements, acceptance criteria, and backlog items that enable engineering teams to efficiently deliver business value.

The Data & Analytics (D&A) organization encompasses Data Engineering, Business Intelligence, Data Science, Master Data Management, and AI. The Business Analyst will work across manufacturing, customer, dealer, supply chain, finance, service, and/or other business domains to ensure solutions align with business goals and objectives. The role will support delivery teams utilizing Snowflake, Microsoft Azure, Azure Data Factory, Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, Confluent Kafka, Fivetran, and related enterprise data platforms.

While this position works under the direction of the Product Owner and assists with backlog refinement, requirements management, and stakeholder engagement, the Product Owner retains final accountability for product strategy, roadmap decisions, release planning, and prioritization.

A successful candidate possesses exceptional analytical, communication, documentation, and facilitation skills; understands modern data platforms and analytics delivery practices; and is capable of translating complex business processes into complete, well-defined requirements that support high-quality solution delivery.

Key Responsibilities

Business Analysis & Requirements Management Elicit, analyze, document, and validate business, functional, data, reporting, and integration requirements from stakeholders Conduct interviews, workshops, requirement sessions, and discovery meetings with business and technical teams Translate business objectives into detailed functional requirements, user stories, and acceptance criteria Identify process improvements, automation opportunities, gaps, risks, and dependencies Facilitate requirement reviews and gain stakeholder alignment before development activities begin Ensure requirements remain traceable throughout the software development lifecycle Business Requirements Documentation Develop comprehensive Business Requirements Documents (BRDs) for large-scale initiatives and strategic projects Create supporting artifacts including process flows, use cases, business rules, capability maps, stakeholder analyses, and requirement traceability matrices Document reporting requirements, KPI definitions, metrics, calculations, and business logic Maintain requirements repositories and ensure documentation remains current throughout the project lifecycle Support creation and review of source-to-target mappings, data definitions, and business transformation requirements Agile Delivery & Product Backlog Support Partner closely with Product Owners to refine and manage product backlogs Create, maintain, and update JIRA Epics, Features, Stories, Tasks, and Acceptance Criteria for product enhancements and small-to-medium initiatives Participate in sprint planning, backlog grooming, sprint reviews, retrospectives, and other Agile ceremonies Support estimation activities by ensuring requirements are sufficiently detailed and understood by delivery teams Assist Product Owners in evaluating business value, dependencies, and impacts across competing requests Monitor delivery progress and support resolution of requirements-related questions during development Data, Analytics & Reporting Requirements Gather and document requirements related to Enterprise Data Warehouses, Data Lakes, Data Products, Metric Stores, Semantic Models, and Analytics solutions Collaborate with Data Modelers and Data Engineers to define business definitions, facts, dimensions, hierarchies, metrics, and reporting requirements Document data sourcing, transformation, integration, validation, and reconciliation requirements Support requirements definition for batch, API-based, CDC, and real-time streaming architectures Assist in defining data quality rules, validation criteria, exception handling requirements, and business controls Partner with BI teams to establish reporting requirements supporting Power BI and other analytics platforms Stakeholder Engagement & Communication Serve as a liaison between business stakeholders and technical delivery teams Facilitate requirement discussions across business, engineering, analytics, governance, and architecture teams Translate technical concepts into business-friendly language and communicate business priorities to technical teams Manage stakeholder expectations and provide status updates on requirements and scope decisions Build strong relationships across business functions to improve collaboration and delivery outcomes Data Governance & Process Alignment Ensure business requirements align with enterprise data governance standards, data definitions, metadata requirements, and business glossaries Promote consistency in business terminology, KPI definitions, and reporting standards Assist with audit, compliance, privacy, and governance-related documentation activities Testing & Solution Validation Partner with QA Engineers and business stakeholders to validate delivered solutions against documented requirements Support User Acceptance Testing (UAT) planning, execution, and defect triage activities Review test cases to ensure business requirements are adequately represented Assist with defect analysis and requi

Skill Requirements

• 8+ years of experience as a Business Analyst, Systems Analyst, Product Analyst, or similar role
• Experience supporting Data & Analytics, Business Intelligence, Data Engineering, Data Warehousing, MDM, or related technology teams
• Strong business analysis, requirements elicitation, process mapping, and documentation skills
• Experience creating Business Requirements Documents (BRDs), Functional Requirements Documents (FRDs), user stories, use cases, and acceptance criteria
• Strong understanding of Agile delivery methodologies and product-oriented operating models
• Hands-on experience with JIRA, Azure DevOps, or similar backlog management tools
• Understanding of enterprise data warehousing concepts, dimensional modeling, semantic models, metrics, and analytics reporting
• Familiarity with modern data platforms including Snowflake, Microsoft Azure, Azure Data Factory, Azure Data Lake, Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, Confluent Kafka, and Fivetran or similar
• Understanding of data integration concepts including ETL/ELT, CDC, APIs, batch processing, and event-driven architectures
• Familiarity with Data Governance, Metadata Management, Data Quality, and Master Data Management principles
• (Optional) Experience supporting SAP-enabled business processes and enterprise reporting initiatives preferred
• Ability to analyze business processes and translate complex concepts into clear requirements
• Strong facilitation, presentation, communication, and stakeholder management skills
• Strong organizational skills with the ability to manage multiple concurrent initiatives
• Experience working with cross-functional teams consisting of Product Owners, Data Engineers, Data Modelers, QA Engineers, Architects, and Business Stakeholders
• Working knowledge of SQL and data analysis concepts preferred

Exposure to AI-assisted productivity and documentation tools preferred

Other Requirements

• Corporate office environment – fast-paced

• Operate with minimal supervision
• Collaborate with distributed teams across multiple business and technology functions