Business Analyst

Introduction
Are you looking for a career that will allow you to use your unique blend of business acumen and tech savvy? Business Analysts at IBM are subject matter experts that build the bridge between our business and our clients, immersing themselves into the market to understand problems and find innovative solutions. Be ready to navigate the complex relationships that make the business world run and find the actionable insights that result in great business decisions.

Your Role and Responsibilities

Octo, an IBM company, is an industry-leading, award-winning provider of technical solutions for the federal government. At Octo, we specialize in providing agile software engineering, user experience design, cloud services, and digital strategy services that address government's most pressing missions. Octo delivers intelligent solutions and rapid results, yielding lower costs and measurable outcomes.

Our team is what makes Octo great. At Octo you'll work beside some of the smartest and most accomplished staff you'll find in your career. Octo offers fantastic benefits and an amazing workplace culture where you will feel valued while you perform mission critical work for our government. Voted one of the region’s best places to work multiple times, Octo is an employer of choice!

Business Analyst

Octo, an IBM company, is an industry-leading, award-winning provider of technology solutions for the federal government. At Octo, we specialize in providing agile software engineering, user experience design, cloud services, and digital strategy services that address the government's most pressing missions. Octo delivers intelligent solutions and rapid results, yielding lower costs and measurable outcomes.

Our team is what makes Octo great. At Octo, you'll work beside some of the smartest and most accomplished staff you'll find in your career. Octo offers fantastic benefits and an amazing workplace culture where you will feel valued while you perform mission-critical work for our government. Voted one of the region’s best places to work multiple times, Octo is an employer of choice!

You…

As a Business Analyst at Octo, you will join an Agile development program in support of the development of a new high-priority, mission-critical application at the General Services Administration (GSA). You are comfortable working side by side with software engineers, product managers, designers, and clients, making decisions together to assist the team in quickly breaking down features into user stories through progressive elaboration and tracking and reporting on operational needs. You must be willing to ask questions and dig deep to identify and solve problems experienced by the team and the customer and focus on continuous improvement, making thoughtful suggestions for areas of process enhancement. You must have a passion for maintaining secure high-quality, reliable, and available software solutions and be a proactive, fast learner.

Us…

We were founded as a fresh alternative in the Government Consulting Community and are dedicated to the belief that results are a product of analytical thinking and agile design principles and that solutions are built in collaboration with, not for, our customers. This mantra drives us to succeed and act as true partners in advancing our client’s missions.

Program Mission…

This program will support the GSA Information Technology mission, providing development and operational support for new and existing legacy mission-enabling applications. Your team on the program will have a direct say in your participation in the design and implementation of a mission-critical application that integrates with other GSA systems and impacts GSA employees and public users, starting at the design phase to include the development, implementation, and maintenance of a technology roadmap.

Responsibilities:

• Support the daily cross-functional operational readiness of GSA’s shared Salesforce.com platform.

• Managing the lifecycle of change requests and deploying any changes to Dev, QA, Staging, and Production.

• Define and implement standardized deployment schedules that deliver hotfixes and minor, medium, and major releases (using GitHub, Copado or Flosum, and Salesforce methods).

• Maintain the integrity of services integrated with our cloud environments, including proprietary in-house systems and external integrations.

• Evaluate new Salesforce releases and applications, participate in plans for their implementation, and remain current with Salesforce administration best practices.

• Use Salesforce best practice insight for secure application release management.

• Support regression testing and validation of Salesforce configuration and development.

• Packaging the implementation of a release in Git/Copado/Flosum, merging with upstream work, resolving conflicts, coordinating tasks with the development team, maintaining a pre/post deployment checklist, and deploying to sandboxes.

• Troubleshooting release issues using tools like debug logs.

• Troubleshooting system configuration and data management issues.

• Partner cross-functionally on platform innovation and DevOps maturity.

• Collaborating with internal and client staff in identifying, planning, executing, tracking, and reporting all activities for security and compliance-related activities.

• Troubleshoot and complete complex data loads and deployment errors.

  Years of Experience: 5+ years of related experience preferred. Education may be substituted for experience.

  Education: BA/BS degree preferred

  Location: Remote within the United States.

  Clearance: Ability to obtain a government clearance.

Required Technical and Professional Expertise

• Must be able to conduct a thorough analysis of as-is business processes and work with stakeholders, subject-matter experts, and end-users to produce requirements.

• Be able to lead and participate in agile ceremonies, including daily standups, sprint planning, retrospectives, product demos, and backlog refinement.

• Communicates regularly and builds strong relationships with product owners, project managers, technical leads, software developers, etc., to identify information needs, facilitate information exchange, and ensure adherence to business requirements and program standards.

• Writes clear and specific user stories which clearly define the who, what, and business value of the user story.

• Captures Agile artifacts to include User Stories (Planned vs. Actual), Velocity Charts, Burn-down Charts, Sprint Retrospective notes, etc.

• Analyzes business process flows to develop activity models and detailed requirements.

• Documents discussions during facilitated sessions to capture information.

• Has the ability to transform business requirements into technical requirements for the Development team.

• Schedules and conducts meetings with the development team to gain insight into the state of individual release and sprint plans, schedules, deliverables, milestones, project risks, and mitigation.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to communicate solutions effectively to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Clearance: Ability to obtain a government clearance.

Preferred Technical and Professional Expertise

Desired / Preferred Experience:

• Experience supporting GSA.

• Experience working in the government sector.

• Familiarity with UI/UX design principles, preferably experience with user research and wireframing.

• SAFe Agile and Certified Scrum Master Certifications

Desired Certifications:

• Salesforce Certified Administrator
• Salesforce Certified Business Analyst
• Salesforce Certified App Builder
• Salesforce Certified Consultant

IBM Consulting is IBM’s consulting and global professional services business, with market leading capabilities in business and technology transformation. With deep expertise in many industries, we offer strategy, experience, technology, and operations services to many of the most innovative and valuable companies in the world. Our people are focused on accelerating our clients’ businesses through the power of collaboration. We believe in the power of technology responsibly used to help people, partners and the planet.

In a world where technology never stands still, we understand that, dedication to our clients success, innovation that matters, and trust and personal responsibility in all our relationships, lives in what we do as IBMers as we strive to be the catalyst that makes the world work better.

Being an IBMer means you’ll be able to learn and develop yourself and your career, you’ll be encouraged to be courageous and experiment everyday, all whilst having continuous trust and support in an environment where everyone can thrive whatever their personal or professional background.

Our IBMers are growth minded, always staying curious, open to feedback and learning new information and skills to constantly transform themselves and our company. They are trusted to provide on-going feedback to help other IBMers grow, as well as collaborate with colleagues keeping in mind a team focused approach to include different perspectives to drive exceptional outcomes for our customers. The courage our IBMers have to make critical decisions everyday is essential to IBM becoming the catalyst for progress, always embracing challenges with resources they have to hand, a can-do attitude and always striving for an outcome focused approach within everything that they do.

Are you ready to be an IBMer?

IBM’s greatest invention is the IBMer. We believe that through the application of intelligence, reason and science, we can improve business, society and the human condition, bringing the power of an open hybrid cloud and AI strategy to life for our clients and partners around the world.Restlessly reinventing since 1911, we are not only one of the largest corporate organizations in the world, we’re also one of the biggest technology and consulting employers, with many of the Fortune 50 companies relying on the IBM Cloud to run their business. At IBM, we pride ourselves on being an early adopter of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and blockchain. Now it’s time for you to join us on our journey to being a responsible technology innovator and a force for good in the world.

IBM offers a competitive and comprehensive benefits program. Eligible employees may have access to: - Healthcare benefits including medical & prescription drug coverage, dental, vision, and mental health & well being - Financial programs such as 401(k), the IBM Employee Stock Purchase Plan, financial counseling, life insurance, short & long- term disability coverage, and opportunities for performance based salary incentive programs - Generous paid time off including 12 holidays, minimum 56 hours sick time, 120 hours vacation, 12 weeks parental bonding leave in accordance with IBM Policy, and other Paid Care Leave programs. IBM also offers paid family leave benefits to eligible employees where required by applicable law - Training and educational resources on our personalized, AI-driven learning platform where IBMers can grow skills and obtain industry-recognized certifications to achieve their career goals - Diverse and inclusive employee resource groups, giving & volunteer opportunities, and discounts on retail products, services & experiences The compensation range and benefits for this position are based on a full-time schedule for a full calendar year. The salary will vary depending on your job-related skills, experience and location. Pay increment and frequency of pay will be in accordance with employment classification and applicable laws. For part time roles, your compensation and benefits will be adjusted to reflect your hours. Benefits may be pro-rated for those who start working during the calendar year. This position was posted on the date cited in the key job details section and is anticipated to remain posted for 21 days from this date or less if not needed to fill the role. We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable law. IBM will not be providing visa sponsorship for this position now or in the future. Therefore, in order to be considered for this position, you must have the ability to work without a need for current or future visa sponsorship.

IBM is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, caste, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, veteran status, or other characteristics. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.