Sr. IT Business Analyst

About the Role:

This Senior BA role is ideal for someone who thrives at the intersection of creativity, curiosity, and collaboration. You'll be part of a dynamic, cross-functional agile team that values strong relationships and has a supportive culture. If you love a fast-paced environment, enjoy juggling a mix of initiatives, and feel energized from helping shape solutions, you'll feel right at home supporting Baird's Operations department. This hybrid role keeps you connected—with most of the team and stakeholders in our downtown Milwaukee office—while giving you the flexibility to work remotely 2–3 days a week. We're looking for someone who's passionate about understanding the "why" behind processes, eager to improve them, and not afraid to look beyond the obvious.

If you're detail-oriented, prefer a kanban-style workflow over formal scrum, and enjoy working closely with teammates and stakeholders, this role is a great fit. You'll have the opportunities to bring clarity and craft elegant solutions- tackling ongoing challenges, creating meaningful impact for end users, and unlocking growth opportunities for yourself.

This is a hybrid opportunity working 2-3 days/week in office at our Milwaukee, WI headquarters.

The Impact You'll Make:

Requirements Gathering

• Independently elicits functional & nonfunctional requirements using interviews, workflow analysis, requirements workshops, surveys, etc. to provide business process descriptions, business requirements, use cases, and user stories.
• Assess situations and appropriately applies advanced BA approaches and techniques to capture clear requirements.
• Develops analysis approach for medium to large/complex efforts.
• Lead and facilitate efforts to gather data requirements for projects, by partnering with business end-users as well as experts on our Data team. (SQL experience preferred.)
• Quickly develops an understanding of value streams and end-to-end processes, while looking for opportunities for improvement
• Connects day-to-day work, for self and team, to strategic outcomes and goals of the firm
• Able to work in ambiguous situations, with minimal guidance, and create an actionable plan

Systems Analysis:

• Collaborate with project team members (developers, architects, QA, PM and product owners) to establish the technical vision and analyze tradeoffs between usability and performance needs.
• Independently and with the team develops visualizations and diagrams in support of analysis approach to aid stakeholders in understanding business and technical approach.
• Leads execution in partnership with Sr. team members and may mentor others.
• Quickly develops an end-to-end knowledge of technology environment and partners to understand business impacts

Relationship Management:

• Builds trusting relationships and represents IT in strategic conversations between business partners and CRG leaders, with minimal guidance
• Identifies and resolves conflicting objectives/expectations between senior leaders, with minimal guidance
• Leads interactions with associates at all levels of the organization, including COOs and senior business leaders, with minimal guidance
• Navigates organizational complexities to drive decisions and achieve outcomes
• Quickly establishes a network throughout Baird and can leverage it to navigate complex situations

Delivery Leadership:

• Recognizes the strategic business needs and leads the team, IT- and business- leadership to deliver business-impactful results
• Leads large and/or complex initiatives and helps coordinate organizational changes
• Effectively challenges and drives continuous improvement on immediate team and across the portfolio

Solution Delivery:

• Effectively manages stakeholder expectations
• Leads and executes work using a variety of project methodologies (lean, agile, waterfall, iterative) based on project need with minimal guidance
• Identifies and manages project risks, issues, dependencies, and milestones in accordance with project need
• Collaborate with supported business units to define project milestones, requirements, and solutions
• Perform analysis of potential solutions against business requirements and financial impact to identify the best solution for the business.    
• Facilitates project management role on small to medium size projects, ensuring the right capabilities are encompassed in the project team and scope.

Quality Assurance:

• Supports quality assurance through collaboration with QA and project team validation.
• Act as a facilitator for User Acceptance Testing with the client, third party vendors, or other testers that use the product, leveraging acceptance criteria defined with the business partner

What You'll Bring to Baird:

• At least 7 years IT related experience including a minimum of 5 years Business Analysis experience
• Bachelor Degree in Computer Science, MIS, Business Administration, or Finance is preferred
• Two years serving as a Business Analyst in the financial industry is preferred
• Detail oriented and possess exceptional organizational, time management, and problem-solving skills.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, ability to influence without authority including with senior business leaders
• Demonstrated success working in agile environments
• Proven ability to write clear business requirements, use cases, and user stories
• Understanding of data structures, data integration, and data warehousing is a plus but not required
• Experience with Microsoft products including Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Microsoft Teams, One Drive, CoPilot and Office 365 is desired
• Able to work and grow in a fast-paced, team-oriented environment

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Baird is committed to diversity and provides employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy, citizenship, national origin, age, disability, military service, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetic information, or any other status protected by law.