Business Systems Analyst

Business Systems Analyst at Totara

At Totara, our strength lies in the efficient delivery of innovative products and customer support, setting the standard for success in our industry. To fuel our continued growth, we are seeking a Business Systems Analyst to join our TotaraGov customer engineering team.

This role prioritizes Business Analysis (approximately 60% requirements/systems analysis and 40% QA/UAT), operating at the crucial intersection of business needs, product behavior, and release quality. You will collaborate closely with a dedicated field engineering team and coordinate with our larger R&D organization to translate genuine customer needs into precise requirements, acceptance criteria, and testable outcomes.

Additionally, you will lead User Acceptance Testing (UAT) planning and hands-on testing for releases, contributing to light test automation over time using modern tools and AI-assisted workflows, with engineering support for the more complex aspects.

This position supports federal customers on FedRAMP-authorized infrastructure, requiring U.S. citizenship and the ability to pass a background check.

Responsibilities

Requirements & Systems Analysis (Primary)

• Partner with stakeholders to gather, analyze, and document business requirements, functional specifications, user stories, and acceptance criteria.
• Translate business needs into clear, testable requirements, ensuring alignment with system capabilities and constraints.
• Create and maintain process models, use cases, workflows, and supporting artifacts to communicate intent and define 'definition of done'.
• Identify gaps, ambiguities, and risks early; propose options and tradeoffs to facilitate informed decisions.
• Act as a liaison across field engineering, R&D, and customer stakeholders to maintain aligned and measurable delivery.

QA, UAT, and Release Validation (Secondary)

• Build and execute test plans and test cases directly linked to requirements and acceptance criteria.
• Perform hands-on functional and regression testing for releases; coordinate integration testing with engineering as needed.
• Plan, coordinate, and facilitate UAT with end users, including defining entry/exit criteria, providing test guidance, and managing sign-off workflows.
• Identify, document, and track defects with clear reproduction steps and expected vs. actual results; support triage and verification of fixes.
• Review test outcomes, summarize quality risk, and communicate release readiness to stakeholders.

Automation & AI-Assisted Testing (Expectation)

• Contribute to light automation by drafting and maintaining a small set of high-value automated checks (e.g., smoke/regression) in partnership with engineering.
• Utilize AI-assisted workflows to accelerate test case design, exploratory testing, and automation/script drafting, strictly adhering to Totara security requirements and avoiding exposure of sensitive data.
• Continuously reduce repetitive manual work by improving test coverage, reusability, and clarity of test assets.

Collaboration & Communication

• Work closely with cross-functional teams (engineering, operations, customer stakeholders) to ensure alignment on scope, risks, and timelines.
• Provide clear status updates on requirements readiness, UAT progress, defects, and quality risk.
• Participate in planning, stand-ups, reviews, and retrospectives to enhance delivery execution and quality outcomes.

Documentation & Reporting

• Maintain high-quality documentation for requirements, acceptance criteria, test plans, test cases, defects, and UAT artifacts.
• Produce quality summaries (coverage, defect themes, outstanding risk) for internal and customer-facing stakeholders when required.
• Support knowledge base and user documentation updates when changes impact user workflows.

Required Skills

• 2+ years of experience in a Business Analyst, Business Systems Analyst, or similar role focused on software delivery.
• Strong capability in requirements discovery, user stories, and acceptance criteria that translate into testable behavior.
• Hands-on experience creating test plans/cases and executing manual testing for web applications; comfortable validating fixes and preventing regression.
• Experience planning and facilitating UAT with end users, including coordination, guidance, and sign-off readiness.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills; able to explain technical behavior and tradeoffs to non-technical stakeholders.
• Strong documentation habits (requirements, acceptance criteria, test assets, defect reports) and comfort working in a fast-paced delivery cycle.
• Familiarity with Agile delivery.

Nice-to-have

• Experience drafting or maintaining automated test scripts (any modern framework/tool); strong desire to grow automation skills.
• Familiarity with AI-assisted testing and/or AI coding assistants to accelerate test design and scripting (used responsibly and securely).
• SQL/data validation experience.
• Familiarity with AWS and/or Azure environments, and tools such as Jira, Azure DevOps, Confluence, and similar systems.

Skills and Competencies

• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and critical-thinking skills.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to communicate complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.
• Proficiency in creating and maintaining detailed documentation (requirements, test cases, test results, etc.).
• Familiarity with Agile and Waterfall methodologies.
• Knowledge of SQL and ability to query databases for testing purposes is a plus but not required.
• Experience in automated testing tools and scripts is a plus but not required.
• Detail-oriented with strong organizational skills and the ability to prioritize tasks in a fast-paced environment.
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team to drive project success.

Key skills/competency

• Requirements Analysis
• User Stories
• Acceptance Criteria
• Test Plan Development
• Manual Testing
• User Acceptance Testing (UAT)
• Agile Methodology
• Defect Management
• Stakeholder Communication
• Systems Analysis