Senior Business Analyst in Bethesda, MD, Maryland at Highrise Consulting Inc

Highrise Consulting, Inc. (www.highriseconsulting.com) is seeking candidates for the Senior Business Analyst (BA) – Partner Engagement position to work full-time remotely supporting NIH/eRA (National Institutes of Health).

This role is focused on supporting federal partner-related activities within the eRA ecosystem. The Senior BA will serve as a primary coordination interface between eRA teams and partner federal agencies, supporting on-boarding, ongoing engagement, and operational readiness activities. The ideal candidate brings deep grants management experience and a demonstrated ability to communicate complex system capabilities to executive and partner audiences.

Key Responsibilities:

• Quickly develop a thorough understanding of eRA system functionality and be able to present both "big picture" overviews and detailed deep-dives to new and prospective partners, in collaboration with relevant eRA Subject Matter Experts (SMEs).
• Serve as the primary coordination interface for assigned federal partner organizations during on-boarding and throughout ongoing engagement activities.
• Establish and maintain effective working relationships with partner agency representatives, eRA business teams, and technical support organizations to ensure continuity of service.
• Coordinate and actively participate in partner-facing activities including on-boarding discussions, implementation reviews, service assessments, and operational readiness activities.
• Prepare and facilitate information exchange between partner organizations and eRA teams to support alignment on priorities, timelines, dependencies, and service impacts.
• Prepare executive briefings for eRA Senior Leadership and partner stakeholders.
• Analyze, identify, and communicate coordination gaps, unresolved issues, and operational risks to appropriate stakeholders.
• Maintain on-boarding milestones, open action items, partner concerns, and issue resolution status for all assigned partner organizations.
• Coordinate follow-up activities with relevant parties to support timely resolution of open items.
• Escalate unresolved issues, service concerns, or operational risks to eRA management or designated alternate in accordance with established escalation procedures.
• Utilize requirements elicitation techniques to gather business requirements from system stakeholders as needed to support partner engagements.
• Support eRA Product Owners and Team Leads in planning, road mapping, and monitoring project work related to partner activities.
• Maintain requirements traceability and other documentation following agile principles.

Required Skills:

• Bachelor's degree or higher and a minimum of 5 years of experience working in the Information Technology field directly as a Business/Systems Analyst, with at least 2 years in a senior or lead capacity.

• A minimum of 3 years of experience documenting and managing requirements and conducting requirements analysis in an Agile environment.

• A minimum of 3 years of experience eliciting system requirements using standard techniques such as interviews, user groups, surveys, and documentation review.

• Experience preparing executive-level briefings and communication materials for senior leadership audiences.

• Experience serving as a primary point of contact or relationship manager for external stakeholder or partner organizations.

• Demonstrated experience working with cross-functional teams including developers, testers, and business stakeholders.

• Demonstrated experience marketing and presenting system functionality to prospective partner agencies, including the ability to tailor demonstrations to varied audiences ranging from executive stakeholders to technical teams.

Preferred Skills / Experience:

• Experience with federal grants management systems, ideally with a shared federal service provider. Full life-cycle exposure (pre-award, award, post-award) is preferred.

• Bachelor's (or higher) degree in Business, Information Technology Management, Information Systems, Computer Science, or a related discipline (MS or MBA a plus).

• Proficiency with agile tools including Jira and Confluence.

• Experience with federal partner agency on-boarding, interagency coordination, or federal program management.

• Experience performing gap analyses and operational risk assessments.

• Knowledge of business process modeling techniques and tools.

• Familiarity with federal grants management policy and regulatory frameworks.

Professional Skills (Required):

• Must have excellent written and oral communication skills — clear, succinct, and executive-ready.

• Must be comfortable operating in a fast-paced, matrixed team environment with a client-centric culture.

• Must be able to multi-task and shift priorities as needed in response to evolving partner needs.

• Must be able to work effectively with diverse stakeholder types — from technical teams to senior agency officials — and facilitate groups to consensus.

• Must demonstrate strong organizational skills and attention to detail in tracking open items, milestones, and issue resolution.

• Must be able to pass a background investigation and qualify for a Public Trust clearance