Business Analyst - Engineering Enablement

Building services that enable others

Springer Nature is one of the world’s leading global research, educational and professional publishers. It is home to an array of respected and trusted brands and imprints, with more than 170 years of combined history behind them, providing quality content through a range of innovative products and services. Every day, around the globe, our imprints, books, journals and resources reach millions of people, helping researchers and scientists to discover, students to learn and professionals to achieve their goals and ambitions. The company has around 10,000 staff in over 50 countries.

We’re looking for a Business Analyst who will help us fulfil our mission to enable product teams to focus on delivering value.

About us: Engineering Enablement

The EE department consists of around 60 people, spread over teams that closely collaborate to fulfil our mission. In Springer Nature Technology (SNT) we serve different core expertise: PaaS, Databases, Observability and Cloud- and Release Engineering. We are a very distributed department but sometimes we travel to work with each other in person. We are based around the globe with main locations in London, Dordrecht, Berlin, Lisbon and New York. 

About The Job 

We are looking for a skilled and passionate Business Analyst to join our Engineering Enablement (EE) department. This role will focus on building and improving our existing enablement services which we offer to support and enable a variety of product- and development teams. 

Within this role you will work with stakeholders from different product teams and within IT to understand their needs and support several EE teams in delivering products, features, services that meet our customers objectives. With a strong focus on collaboration, communication, critical thinking and facilitation skills, you will support key initiatives (Modernisation, Cloud Cost Governance, Product and Service offering) that cut across the EE department. As the sole Business Analyst in EE you will encounter multiple projects and business needs, which will provide opportunities to grow and develop skills in broader areas including, Product Management, Project Management and more. 

You will be joining a cross-functional department with different nationalities, backgrounds and experience levels. All members collaborate to deliver solutions that best satisfy the needs of our customers and so the business. We are working to create a culture that encourages new ideas and innovation while focusing on delivering the best value for Springer Nature. Throughout your work you will be closely supported by the wider EE leadership team. 

About You 

• You are able to quickly gain context of your area and how it fits together into the wider business context

• You are proactive, self driven, make yourself useful, pull information and don't wait to be asked, you seek advice when unsure

• You like working in a collaborative team where there is collective responsibility

• You can demonstrate experience in working successfully with teams in an agile manner

• You can demonstrate your experience in facilitating groups to achieve defined goals and outcomes using various facilitation tools and techniques

• You will have excellent communication skills and articulate concepts and ideas from technical and functional business perspectives

• You can use available data to inform decisions, and build better products

• You proactively identify pain points and openly address any forms of gaps 

• You can demonstrate the outstanding analytical ability to solve complex problems

• Have experience working in a dynamic and collaborative environment

• You use your drive, creativity and initiative to move teams forward

• You have experience in driving continuous improvement and innovation across teams

• You can collaborate with multiple teams across different locations to deliver solutions

• You are intellectually curious and motivated - constantly looking for more context

• You disdain routine and get involved with a wide variety of different activities

You are a friendly team member who is modest and humble, open to learn from anyone regardless of age, gender, race, role or experience. You value social interactions and are able to self-reflect by asking questions. You are self-confident and smart, but never a smart-ass. Continuously looking for improvement, but not chasing perfection and accepting failure. You have a strong preference of working together and sharing knowledge as opposed to quickly getting things done alone. We care more about these qualities than technical knowledge.

What you will be doing

Within 3 Months, you will:

• Have an understanding of the department’s context within Springer Nature

• Have gained an understanding of prioritised objectives facing EE 

• Have started to familiarise yourself with the EE tech landscape (Paas/Release Engineering/ Databases/ Observability/ Cloud + on-prem Offering)

• Have an understanding of the scope of work needed, identifying opportunities and challenges

• Have started to develop relationships with core stakeholders 

• Have started to build relationships with teams across EE

• Co-plan, organise and lead group sessions that generate ideas and resolve problems

  By 3-6 months, you will:

• Have a clear understanding of each of the EE team’s priorities and be able to communicate this to stakeholders

• Be able to monitor, track and communicate progress, risks and issues to stakeholders

• Be able to prioritise competing demands and obtain buy-in from stakeholders

• Gauge the complexity or scope of a piece of work, collaboratively breaking it into smaller pieces as appropriate

• Be actively facilitating feedback and continuous improvement

• Strengthen team ceremonies conducted regularly, adding value to the delivery process

• Set context with the teams to ensure any solutions co-defined provide business value whilst solving customer problems

By 6-12 months, you will:

• Be an active member of the overall EE department

• Actively work alongside the department to support the vision and strategy of its products and services in terms of business and customer outcomes

• Have a thorough understanding of the potential opportunities and limitations of the departmental product/service offering

• Ensure scoped work aligns with the departmental goals and vision

• Understand EE’s customers’ and stakeholders’ needs and how your work affects their experience

• Define KPIs to measure product/service performance in terms of business and customer outcomes.

• Instil a data-driven approach to current and future product/service development

• Can unearth the root cause(s) of pain points and validate business opportunities and problems

• Onboard new members to the team

We highly value potential, not just experience, so don't feel you have to tick all the boxes -- we’re looking forward to your application!

At Springer Nature, we value the diversity of our teams and work to build an inclusive culture, where people are treated fairly and can bring their differences to work and thrive. We empower our colleagues and value their diverse perspectives as we strive to attract, nurture and develop the very best talent.

Springer Nature was awarded Diversity Team of the Year at the 2022 British Diversity Awards. Find out more about our DEI work here.

 

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