Principal Business Analyst

Company Description

Informa is a leading academic publishing, business intelligence, knowledge and events business, creating unique content and connectivity for customers all over the world. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a member of the FTSE 100.

Taylor & Francis is one of the world’s largest publishers of high-quality, peer reviewed scholarly journals, books, e-books and reference works. We empower learners, thinkers and doers with trusted knowledge that advances research and enriches lives. We bring together diverse people, ideas and opinions to validate and publish the experts, theories and truths that matter. And we’ve been doing this in an unbroken arc since 1798.

Our purpose is to foster human progress through knowledge. We strongly believe that this requires us to encourage and examine different ideas and voices, so that any work that meets our exacting levels of quality deserves to be included in our publications. This requires open minds, the opportunity for robust debate, and the courage to defend perspectives that stand up to scrutiny, even if they conflict with our personal beliefs or values. Because that’s the only way to find the best obtainable version of the truth and, ultimately, foster human progress. If you agree, then we’d love to hear from you.

Job Description

Taylor & Francis (T&F) is continuing its digital investment with a focus on the needs of academic researchers and institutes. Realising the long-term value of these investments depends on rigorous, coherent business analysis - understanding how the business works, framing the right problems, and ensuring that what we build reflects a shared, well-modelled view of our capabilities, processes and data. 

The Principal Business Analyst is one of two senior BA practitioners aligned to the Taylor & Francis Business Architecture function, reporting to the Enterprise Business Architect. The role leads the largest and most complex cross-domain analysis in its domain group, actively builds up the T&F business architecture, and jointly with the other Principal BA owns the standards, methodology, community and capability of business analysis across T&F. They enable the broader BA community by providing quality oversight, operated through standards, peer review and coaching, not management authority. 

You are the kind of Principal Business Analyst we are looking for if the following describes you: 

• You hold authority through expertise, not position - you are comfortable influencing and raising standards without line-management authority. 

• You are comfortable leading a large, ambiguous initiative while coordinating Business Analysts you do not formally manage. 

• You are confident raising the standards of a mixed BA team with varying skills and backgrounds, and you coach generously. 

• You communicate clearly in writing and in person, especially with senior business and engineering audiences. 

• You have the patience to build business architecture and BA capability incrementally, and you inspire others to persevere through resistance or setbacks. 

• You nurture an open environment where stakeholders and collaborators feel involved and heard, and you work across silos to articulate and achieve shared goals. 

• You are willing to challenge constructively, including pushing back on delivery pressure when it conflicts with BA practice standards or undermines analysis already done. 

• You have an exceptional ability to analyse complex problems, frame them well, and drive towards decisions with the customer in mind. 

Key Responsibilities 

Leading complex and cross-domain analysis 

• Personally scope the largest, most complex and most strategically significant analysis initiatives in the domain group - defining the problem, the scope of analysis required, the approach, the dependencies, and the BA capacity needed across domains. 

• Coordinate Domain BAs through design and implementation once an initiative is scoped - keeping the analysis coherent across teams, respecting capability boundaries, and surfacing and resolving cross-domain conflicts before they reach delivery. 

• Own requirements coherence across domain boundaries, preventing contradictory or overlapping requirements. 

• Lead requirements elicitation and facilitation for high-ambiguity or senior-stakeholder initiatives, and lead feasibility and options analysis for significant initiatives - presenting recommendations to senior stakeholders and governance forums. 

• Manage stakeholder relationships across domain teams and senior product, delivery and engineering stakeholders within the domain group. 

• Contribute to UAT planning across domains for cross-domain initiatives, ensuring end-to-end test coverage is coherent. 

• Maintain analytical quality as work moves through design and implementation, flagging where emerging delivery decisions undermine the original analysis, and act as the senior escalation point for the most ambiguous or contentious analysis problems in the domain group. 

Building up the business architecture 

• Act as the primary BA point of contact for the Business Architect within the domain group, ensuring domain-model vocabulary is applied consistently across BA artefacts. 

• Ensure BA work on initiatives actively feeds the business architecture - processes, organisational structures, systems and data flows are progressively documented and kept current as delivery programmes progress. 

• Lead the documentation of capability-level processes, organisational structures, systems and data flows across the domain group, drawing on Domain BA contributions to build a complete and consistent picture. 

• Support the creation and analysis of Business Decision Records (BDRs), highlight opportunities to unify or simplify process, and surface capability-boundary questions to the Business Architect. 

• Validate that initiative analysis aligns with the target architecture and the domain model, and flag and escalate where it does not. 

Managing the BA practice (shared across the Principal BAs) 

• Jointly define and maintain T&F BA methodology, standards, templates, artefacts and a shared vocabulary tied to the T&F domain model. 

• Jointly define the BA competency framework and progression model, and advise on recruitment, development and retention of BA talent. 

• Jointly run the T&F BA community of practice, identifying and addressing practice-wide skill gaps. 

• Jointly define requirements governance standards across the organisation (traceability, change control, sign-off) and UAT standards across the BA community. 

• Provide quality oversight of BA outputs within the aligned domain group — reviewing artefacts and ensuring process models, requirements documentation and domain analysis are correctly captured. 

• Coach Domain BAs in the aligned group on technique, standards and approach, building capability without direct line-management authority. 

Deliverables 

Key analysis and architecture artefacts produced and overseen by the Principal Business Analyst include, but are not limited to, the following: 

• Initiative scoping and analysis plans for the largest cross-domain initiatives in the domain group 

• Requirements documentation and traceability for complex initiatives, kept coherent across domain boundaries 

• Feasibility and options analyses with recommendations for senior stakeholders and governance forums 

• Capability, process, organisation and data-flow models that feed the T&F business architecture 

• Contributions to Business Decision Records (BDRs) for the domain group 

• Cross-domain UAT plans and end-to-end test coverage maps 

• Key practice-level artefacts produced jointly with the other Principal BAs include, but are not limited to, the following: 

• T&F BA methodology, standards, templates and shared vocabulary tied to the domain model 

• BA competency framework and progression model 

• Requirements governance and UAT standards for the BA community 

• Quality-review and coaching outputs that raise the standard of BA work across the group 

Qualifications

Education/ Skills Required

• Degree-level education, or professional experience where you have gained equivalent knowledge. 

• Business analysis certification (e.g. BCS/ISEB, IIBA CBAP) is desirable but not essential. 

• Substantial track record of business analysis in complex, multi-domain organisations - publishing, content or platform business experience is an advantage. 

• Demonstrated experience scoping and leading large, complex or cross-domain analysis initiatives end-to-end, including coordinating multiple BAs through design and implementation. 

• Demonstrated experience setting BA standards and methodology in a federated or distributed delivery environment. 

• Direct experience working alongside enterprise or business architects on capability-driven analysis and design. Comfortable contributing to architecture-level artefacts and recording architectural decisions. 

• Strong track record of engaging at senior stakeholder level - technology leadership and business sponsors. 

• Coaching and developmental experience with junior or mid-career BAs, even where formal line management is not involved. 

• Demonstrated experience of working with colleagues in multiple locations and time zones. 

Additional Information

You must have the right to work and live in UK.

Location: The successful candidate will be able to utilise our balanced working model. We ask that candidates live within a commutable distance of our London office to ensure that as a balanced worker they can make it to our office location to collaborate as required. There is an expectation for a minimum of 3 days per week in-person time.

We believe that great things happen when people connect face-to-face. That's why we work in-person with each other, or with customers and partners, three days a week or more. When you’re not spending time together in one of our offices or other workplaces – like at conference – you get the flexibility and support to work from home or remotely.

What we offer in return: 

• A competitive salary + bonus
• 24 days annual leave
• 4 volunteering days annually
• Day off for your birthday
• Pension contributions
• Medical insurance for self and dependants; life cover and personal accident cover for self
• Seasonal social and charitable events
• Training and development
• Tools and equipment for remote working

We want all our candidates to shine in our recruitment process. Please let us know if there is anything we can do to ensure you are able to show us your best self. This could include having the application form in a different format, more time for questions, or anything else – please ask us, we are happy to be flexible! Please contact recruitment@tandf.co.uk  

Being Yourself at Taylor & Francis: 

If you’re excited about working with Taylor & Francis to foster human progress through knowledge, we invite you to apply even if your existing skills and experience don’t fit every item listed above. At Taylor & Francis, we are at our best and most successful when colleagues can be themselves and make a contribution regardless of their identity or background. As a colleague, you will have the opportunity to further innovate and develop in areas that you are passionate about. Our goal is to empower you with the resources, incentives, and flexibility you need to enjoy success at work and to live a healthy, balanced life. 

Taylor & Francis is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We believe in and value diversity of people and thought, fostering a supportive and inclusive environment where all colleagues can learn and succeed as their true selves. Taylor & Francis recruits, develops, and retains colleagues without regard to any protected personal characteristics or other non-merit based factor. 

If you have a disability, or face another barrier, and would like to request an adjustment to assist your participation in the hiring process and/or in the advertised position, please contact recruitment@tandf.co.uk. Your request will be reviewed and considered in the strictest confidence.

We genuinely care about our colleagues, promoting work-life balance, wellbeing, and flexible working. We believe that the skills and experience you bring to Taylor & Francis are invaluable. We want you to have the opportunity to develop your abilities, and to innovate and develop in areas which you are passionate about. To find out more about our business and the great career opportunities please go to our Careers Site: http://www.taylorandfrancisgroup.com/careers 

Or better yet check out our LinkedIn ‘Life’ Page, highlighting our accomplishments, employees, and company culture. It’s also a good way of meeting our recruitment team, who will be happy to advise you on your journey here at T&F.