Position Details
Executive Support
Location: University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham UK
Full time starting salary is normally in the range £46,735 to £55,755 with potential progression once in post to £62,728
Grade: 8
Full Time, Fixed Term contract up to February 2027
Closing date: 5th May 2025
Our offer to you
People are at the heart of what we are and do. The University of Birmingham is proud to have been a part of the City of Birmingham and the wider region for over 100 years, and we are equally proud to be recognised as a leading global university. We want to attract talented people from across the city and beyond, support them to succeed, and celebrate their success.
We are committed to helping the people who work here to develop through our sector-leading Birmingham Professional programme which provides all professional services staff with development opportunities and the encouragement to reach their full potential. With almost 5,000 professional services jobs in a wide range of functions in Edgbaston and in our campus in Dubai, there are plenty of opportunities for you to be able to develop your career at the University.
We believe there is no such thing as a typical member of staff and that diversity is a source of strength that underpins the exchange of ideas, innovation, and debate. We warmly welcome people from all backgrounds and are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where diversity is at the heart of who and what we are, and how we work.
Supporting our people to achieve a healthy work/life balance is important both to our employees and to the success of the University and, depending on the role, we offer a variety of flexible working arrangements. We therefore welcome discussions on all forms of flexible working. In addition, you will receive a generous package of benefits including 40 days paid holiday a year, one paid day a year for volunteering, occupational sick pay, and a pension scheme. We also have three high quality subsidised day nurseries.
The University is situated in leafy Edgbaston and there are excellent transport links to our beautiful campus, including main bus routes and a train station on site. On campus we have a state-of-the-art sports centre with pool, shops, places to eat and drink, our own art gallery, museum and botanical gardens.
Background
Are you passionate about shaping the future of data and analytics in a leading institution? The University of Birmingham is undergoing a major digital transformation, with a strong focus on enhancing its data and analytics capabilities as key enablers for the University's 2030 ambitions. This role offers an exciting opportunity to work within a rapidly expanding team contributing to a university-wide shift in how we use data to inform strategic decision-making.
We are looking for a technically minded Senior Systems Analyst to support the implementation of our Institutional Data Strategy. You will play a key role in gathering business requirements, improving data workflows, and supporting the development of a new Power BI reporting framework. Working closely with IT Services, Professional Services, and academic stakeholders, you will ensure that our data infrastructure and tools meet the evolving needs of the institution.
This role is ideal for someone with strong analytical and problem-solving skills, experience in business intelligence tools like Power BI, and a passion for using data to drive impact. You will need to be a confident communicator who can work effectively across both technical teams and senior stakeholders, translating complex requirements into clear, actionable insights.
The Data and Analytics Team is a new team supporting the delivery of the University’s Data Strategy. Situated within the Strategic Planning and Performance Insight Office and part of the wider Executive Support Division, we have a close working relationship with IT Services. We work with colleagues across the University to connect a range of perspectives to support senior leaders in making well-informed and evidence-led decisions. We aim to provide trusted advice and expertise, insightful analysis, and robust data.
Role Summary
The University of Birmingham’s digital and data landscape is undergoing major transformation. One of the underpinning elements of our Digital Strategy is to move our on-premise warehousing and reporting to the cloud, investing in new technologies and services. In this role you will play an integral part in supporting the implementation of the Institutional Data Strategy and data informed decision-making by improving the University’s data infrastructure, analytics capabilities, and institutional reporting.
Reporting to the Head of Data and Analytics and working in close partnership with colleagues in IT Services and stakeholders across Professional Services and Colleges, you will be a technically focused analyst with experience of gathering business requirements for enterprise reporting and analytics projects. You will be responsible for gathering business requirements, improving system workflows, and supporting data-driven decision-making across academic and administrative functions ensuring that data platforms, analytics tools, and enterprise systems are aligned with institutional needs. You will support the implementation of a new reporting framework encompassing modern technical reporting solutions, clear data models and definitions, and reporting standards within the Power BI environment.
This will be a huge opportunity for the right person to support the delivery of suites of reports from our new Power BI Reporting Platform. The successful candidate will have strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to translate complex data requirements into actionable insights and proficient in data modelling and business intelligence tools. You will be a proactive communicator and collaborator, able to engage with both technical teams and senior stakeholders, demonstrating a keen eye for detail, a strategic mindset, and a commitment to improving data-driven decision-making in a fast-paced environment.
Main Duties
Business & Data Analysis
* Engage with senior leaders, institutional researchers, and policy teams to define data and reporting needs.
* Conduct business process analysis to improve data collection, reporting, and decision support.
* Arrange and lead requirements gathering sessions to gather, document and translate business requirements, both functional and non-functional, into technical specifications for data warehousing, reporting, and analytics projects.
* Ensure customer requirements and priorities are accurately reflected.
* Facilitate input from stakeholders, provide constructive challenge and enable effective prioritisation of requirements.
* Work closely with the data engineers and data analysts to ensure there is a clear understanding of the business requirements.
Data Management & Integration
* Work with IT and the wider data strategy team to ensure data consistency, accuracy, and accessibility.
* Define data models and ETL processes for institutional analytics.
* Ensure data governance best practices are followed, supporting data security and compliance.
Documentation & Stakeholder Engagement
* Ensure new reports and services meet the needs of the business and users and are aligned with the corporate strategy.
* Develop process maps, process flow diagrams, data models, entity-relationship diagrams, data lineage documentation and system documentation to support institutional analytics.
* Establish effective networking relationships with all stakeholders.
* Act as a liaison between data teams, IT, and business users, ensuring alignment of data strategies with university goals.
* Support training and user adoption of data analytics platforms through a Community of Practice.
User Acceptance Testing
* Plan, identify, design, manage, execute and report on the outcomes of user acceptance tests.
* Create measurable acceptance criteria related to functional and non-functional requirements, features, business processes, user stories and business rules.
* Ensure new reports and services meet the needs of the business and users and are aligned with the corporate strategy.
General Duties
* Actively manage equality, diversity and inclusion through monitoring and evaluation and actively challenging unacceptable behaviour.
* Support the University’s sustainability agenda through resource efficient working.
* Any other duties commensurate with the grade.
Required Knowledge, Skills, Qualifications, Experience
Essential
* Educated to degree level or equivalent qualification plus substantial work experience in a relevant technical/scientific and/or management/supervisory role in a specialist area. A higher degree may also be held. Where no equivalent qualification is held a proven track record of extensive and substantial work experience in a series of progressively more demanding and relevant roles will be required.
* Proven technical specialist knowledge and understanding in a relevant technical area (specialists will require advanced technical expertise).
* Strong experience in business analysis, process mapping, and requirements gathering.
* Ability to translate business needs into technical requirements with strong documentation and communication skills.
* Excellent stakeholder management skills, able to engage with both technical and non-technical audiences.
* Strong stakeholder management with the ability to manage relationships within a diverse organisation which will include senior managers, professional services and academic staff, students and other contacts.
* Excellent communication skills.
* Understanding of data governance, GDPR, data privacy regulations, and compliance best practices.
* Experience of data architecture and modelling (e.g. facts and dimensions, materialised views etc).
* Experience of business intelligence and data visualisation tools (Power BI, Tableau, Qlik, Cognos).
* Proven experience of ensuring data quality and accuracy.
* Ability to see the big picture technically and communicate insights in business terms to everyone in the organisation.
* Analytical and systematic approach to problem-solving.
* A customer-orientated approach to service provision.
* Ability to work calmly and systematically in a busy environment and to meet agreed deadlines.
* Good team player, with an ability to contribute outside their principal area of work in a constructive and helpful manner.
* Awareness of departmental and institutional relationships and an ability to work across teams and activities.
* Experience of championing Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in own work area.
* Ability to monitor and evaluate the extent to which equality and diversity legislation, policies, procedures are applied.
* Ability to identify issues with the potential to impact on protected groups and take appropriate action.
Desirable
* A good awareness of the issues facing UK higher education and how they affect university support services.
* Proven experience of working in agile teams using methodologies such as Scrum or Kanban.
* Knowledge of cloud-based analytics platforms (Azure, AWS, Google Cloud).
Informal enquiries to Katy Holmes, email: k.m.holmes@bham.ac.uk
View our staff values and behaviours here
We believe there is no such thing as a 'typical' member of University of Birmingham staff and that diversity in its many forms is a strength that underpins the exchange of ideas, innovation and debate at the heart of University life. We are committed to proactively addressing the barriers experienced by some groups in our community and are proud to hold Athena SWAN, Race Equality Charter and Disability Confident accreditations. We have an Equality Diversity and Inclusion Centre that focuses on continuously improving the University as a fair and inclusive place to work where everyone has the opportunity to succeed. We are also committed to sustainability, which is a key part of our strategy. You can find out more about our work to create a fairer university for everyoneon our website.
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