Principal Business Data Analyst

Overview

The Principal Business Data Analyst leads collaborations with business teams to identify needs and opportunities for using data to support business monitoring and decision management. The role mentors others in applying analytics and statistical techniques to generate accurate, relevant insights through data exploration, modeling, analysis, and mining.

This position communicates findings effectively through visualizations, dashboards, and presentations to help optimize business decisions and outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Lead engagements with business leaders and staff to clarify needs and define business requirements for strategic data use; anticipate and propose opportunities for analysis and exploration to support business optimization and decision-making.
• Support decision-makers through data exploration, analysis, and statistical inference to identify and interpret trends and patterns, and to detect influences, opportunities, and risks.
• Develop forecasts, regression models, what-if scenarios, and recommendations in consultation with leaders to support strategic/tactical planning and operational decision-making.
• Lead creation of dashboards, visualizations, and reports for business performance monitoring; automate where possible to enable stakeholders to be data-driven.
• Communicate insights to business leaders and colleagues to advance the organization’s collective intelligence.
• Collaborate with the enterprise analytics and information management team to articulate business needs for new or revised data models and views/access to data.
• Produce business-specific workflows and data models for analysis using enterprise analytics and data management tools, including integration of approved external data sets.
• Develop prototype models that join large volumes of data across multiple data domains to deliver views for use by other analysts; apply modeling techniques that ensure integrity and responsiveness in deliverables.
• Identify business opportunities for machine learning and collaborate with Data Scientists to deliver value for the business unit.
• Contribute to data inventory and stewardship efforts, including metadata management, data profiling, data quality remediation, and data cleansing.
• Maintain adherence to enterprise policies and guidelines for data security and privacy, data management, data quality, and data governance; treat data as an enterprise asset to be protected and used strategically and appropriately.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in statistics, analytics, mathematics, economics, computer science, or related functional area; or equivalent experience.
• 6+ years of demonstrated data analytics experience, including querying and analyzing operational and/or financial data, generating insights, and communicating those insights effectively with colleagues and leaders.
• Prior experience leading analytics projects in one or more of the following domains/business functions:
  • Financial Management and Forecasting
  • Risk Assessment
  • Insurance Utilization and Pricing
  • Supply Chain Optimization
  • Retail Management
  • eCommerce Management
  • Consumer Behavior Analysis
  • Marketing Optimization
  • Healthcare Management
• Proficient in building complex data queries using SQL to join, filter, cleanse, and aggregate data; understanding of how no/low-code applications apply SQL concepts to perform similar tasks.
• Proficient in designing data workflows and business-oriented data models against relational database structures.
• Proficient in visualization and dashboard design techniques to create interfaces that monitor business performance against KPIs and highlight trends/patterns.
• Proficient in using data exploration and analysis platforms such as PowerBI, Cognos Analytics, Tableau, SAS, or similar.
• Experience applying statistical modeling to evaluate complex business problems and develop forecasting and what-if scenarios.
• Strategic skills, business acumen, and curiosity to envision opportunities, document requirements, and collaborate for successful outcomes.
• Ability to mentor others to elevate the collective skills of the team.
• Familiarity with Data Science techniques and experience using notebooks (e.g., Jupyter) with programming languages like Python and R.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, presentation, and analytical skills.
• For roles that are remote (Work From Home (WFH)) or hybrid (partial onsite at a VSP location and WFH), must demonstrate a high level of engagement in virtual environments, including maintaining camera presence during meetings to support effective communication and team alignment.

Compensation & Benefits

• Salary range: $84,000.00 - $141,750.00
• Actual pay will be determined based on experience and other job-related factors permitted by law.
• Eligible bonuses and commissions may be included as part of the compensation package.

Location

• Remote (Work From Home (WFH)) or hybrid (partial onsite at a VSP location and WFH).