Conservation Senior Business Analyst

Timmons Group is currently seeking a Senior Business Analyst to guide a multi-year modernization effort for a long-standing client whose mission centers on environmental conservation. In this consulting role you’ll partner closely with the client’s product owners, scientists, and field staff—as well as our own engineering team—to balance two parallel imperatives:

Business agility – enhancing existing systems so they evolve at the pace of new regulatory, operational, and conservation-science needs.

Technical modernization – retiring legacy code and architecture, introducing cloud-native and GIS best practices, and streamlining DevOps pipelines.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities include but are not limited to the following:

• Build Shared Understanding – Translate conservation and regulatory needs into clear, testable user stories, ensuring the client’s product owners, subject-matter experts, and our developers share a single, actionable vision of each feature.
• Decision Enablement – Distill complex trade-offs (scope, timeline, technical debt vs. new capability) into concise, decision-ready options; present these to product owners and guide them toward well-informed, value-focused choices.
• Day-to-Day Judgment Calls – Act as the “first responder” for the development team—clarifying requirements, resolving ambiguities, and making pragmatic priority calls that keep sprints unblocked and delivery on track.
• Facilitate Collaborative Workshops – Lead discovery, journey mapping, and backlog refinement sessions that surface pain points, define value streams, and maintain- equilibrium between modernization tasks and new enhancements.
• Roadmap & Backlog Stewardship – Own and continuously refine the product backlog; run refinement and sprint planning- meetings; track dependencies, acceptance criteria, and Definition of Done across multiple release trains.
• Stakeholder Alignment & Communication – Provide frequent, clear updates to executives and field users; maintain living documentation and metrics that keep all parties in sync on progress, risks, and upcoming decisions.
• Consult & Facilitate – Lead collaborative sessions with cross-functional- client teams to surface pain points, define value streams, and agree on balanced sprint priorities.
• Change Management & Adoption – Develop communication plans, training materials, and adoption KPIs to maximize user uptake of new features and workflows.
• Assist other team members with their deliverables to ensure success of the project and deadline are met
• Provide mentorship to junior staff
• Assist with proposals, RFP responses and winning work through existing clients

Skills/Requirements of a successful candidate include but are not limited to:

• 8+ years of Business Analysis or Product Ownership experience on enterprise software projects, ideally in the public sector- environmental conservation and grant management domain.
• Bachelor's degree required in Business, Management or another related field
• Demonstrated success on long term, phased modernization programs (legacy replacement, cloud replat forming, or large GIS roll-outs).
• Strong consulting presence: workshop facilitation, executive level- communication, and prioritization rooted in a shared understanding of the client’s goals.
• Solid grasp of Agile/Scrum practices; experience translating business objectives into epics, features, and user stories.
• Proficient with Azure DevOps for backlog and release management
• Familiarity with geospatial technologies (Esri ArcGIS suite or open-source alternatives) is a plus.
• Ability to be creative, open minded and organized.
• Must possess excellent communication skills.
• Ability to provide direct, constructive feedback to both teams and individuals.
• Ability to delegate tasks and provide direction as needed.
• CSPO and PBA, CBAP or CCBA desirable