Edtech.com's Summary

Transcend is hiring a Product Business Analyst (BA). The role involves discovering and delivering product solutions to enhance and scale Transcend's impact, gathering and documenting organizational requirements, conducting data analysis, enhancing existing products, and managing various projects. The analyst will bridge communications between technical and non-technical experts and drive operations for product solutions projects.

Highlights

Gather and document business requirements and create functional specifications.
Conduct data and process analysis to identify improvement areas.
Enhance existing products by integrating new technologies and solutions.
Project management across various product solution projects.
Collaborate with technical experts and manage external vendor relationships.
Proficiency in project management and data analysis tools.
Competitive benefits package including medical, dental, and vision coverage.
Paid time off and professional development opportunities.
Experience with Notion and other software tools is advantageous.

Product Business Analyst (BA) Full Description

Product Business Analyst (BA)

Start Date: Immediate

Role Type: Full-time employee

Location: Flexible -- Fully remote/virtual team

Travel: Flexible; willingness to travel approximately once a month for ~2-3 days, ~5-15% travel; with some periods of increased travel

Who We Are

Transcend’s mission is to support communities to create and spread extraordinary learning for all. Founded in 2015, Transcend has partnered with over 390 schools/partners which collectively serve thousands of students in over 30 states across the country. As a research and development (R&D) hub for the education field, Transcend provides schools and systems with research-backed, community-driven models and capacity so they can make significant leaps to reimagine the future of education. Transcend is a nonprofit that operates with a fully remote, nationwide team; currently with 120+ teammates and growing. For more information, visit our website; follow us on LinkedIn, check out this podcast featuring our two co-founders on Class Disrupted, or read this recent article that illuminates the need for this work.

Transcend’s Products Team

Transcend’s Products Team is vital in creating and stewarding a robust set of resources and tools that power our partnerships with school communities. This includes:

Tools & resources that support the content of innovative school design, from primers on cultivating agency in early learning to the implementation supports that enable an evidence-based model to be adopted or adapted into a school
Tools & resources that support the process of innovative school design, from guidance and templates for annual planning to tools for launching a design team to curated examples of strong outputs at each step of the journey
Technology-enabled tools that enable more effective and accessible engagement with content and process supports for innovative school design

We believe products and technology have the potential to significantly amplify the impact of our work by increasing access to our resources and empowering our partners with innovative tools.

The Opportunity

We’re hiring a Product Business Analyst (BA) to help discover and deliver the right product solutions to enhance and scale Transcend's impact and make our work more accessible to a wider range of communities. The role will be home-based within our Products team.

Specifically, in this role you will get to:

Work on a range of projects at various stages of maturity: Some projects will be small and agile, based efforts where roles are more fluid with a very informal development process and other projects will involve more specialist roles in a more formal and mature set of enterprise development processes.
Gather and document organization (business) requirements: Lead the process of gathering context by collaborating with a variety of teammates (and contractors) to understand their needs, pain points, and desired outcomes.
Develop and maintain (functional) requirements documentation: Translate business requirements in order to create and maintain clear and concise high-level functional & technical specifications including user stories, use cases, process flows, and data flow diagrams.
Conduct data and process analysis: Analyze data and processes to identify trends, patterns, and areas for improvement. Document current and proposed workflows.
Enhance existing products: Explore opportunities to integrate product solutions and/or technology into existing products to enhance their functionality and user experience. This includes learning from current users, synthesizing insights and feedback, creating actionable recommendations to enhance existing products and/or develop new products, and stewarding the process of implementing some enhancements.
Project Manage and drive operations for a variety of product solutions projects: Create and manage operational systems to track a variety of workstreams by providing structure, support, and leading cross-functional collaboration.
Collaborate and “bridge communications” with a range of technical experts: Serve as a communications “bridge” between non-technical and technical experts to ensure clear understanding and alignment with both internal staff and external vendors or contractors depending upon the need of the project.
Steward procurement processes of technology needs: Lead project teams in the process of researching, assessing, and ultimately selecting the best external solution, vendor, or contractor for the job at hand.
Quality & Integrity: Quality mgmt including monitoring of unit testing, coordinating with QA resources, and driving internal and external user acceptance testing (UAT).
Implementation support: Support launch, implementation, training, and additional change management required to put a new solution into place.
Stay up to date with industry trends and best practices: Continuously research and learn about new technologies and industry trends that you apply to all the work above.

We’ve included two sample projects for the role below. The goal of these sample projects is to give you more of a window into the work you’d do. Please note that these are illustrative examples!

Collaborate on a cross-functional project to create and/or select a suite of digital tools that could revolutionize how communities find, adopt, and adapt learning solutions in a more accessible way. Imagine a "school design workspace," powered by technology and AI, that empowers communities to easily discover, adopt, and adapt learning solutions—think Expedia, but for education. Just as Expedia democratized travel planning, this project has the potential to streamline the often complex process of school redesign, putting innovation within reach of every community.
- You’ll do so by collaborating across teams to build and/or select a suite of cutting-edge digital tools and resources. You’ll dive deep into research on the latest digital solutions, partner with tech experts, and ultimately, guide the selection and implementation of tools that will transform access for many communities This project is not just about building software; instead, it’s about building a future where every community has the power to create truly personalized innovative school experiences for their students.
Lead the process to enhance Transcend Methods Library (currently in Notion), which is currently the central location for our Design Partners to access the latest guidance and tools to support our school partners along their design journeys. In this project, we anticipate you will drive user research, needs analysis, solution exploration, project planning, implementation oversight, and ongoing support to amplify the tools and resources housed in the library.

Who You Are

You are a highly analytical and highly organized individual with a strong passion for technology and its potential to transform education. You possess excellent communication, interpersonal, and problem-solving skills. In highly ambiguous contexts you are the one who helps the team reach a point of clarity and cohesion. You have a strong detail-orientation and feel comfortable shifting between granular details and broader strategic perspectives. You can do so while managing multiple projects and deadlines. You are proficient in using various software tools, including project management software, data analysis tools, and diagramming tools and you are obsessed with the latest tech trends and developments. You are able to work both in “start-up” mode as well as “enterprise” mode and enjoy the challenge of building things from the ground up and are excited about the opportunity to contribute to the development and implementation of new systems and processes.

And, above all, you deeply believe in the power of education and you’re excited to work in service of a mission that truly matters.

To all of this, you bring:

A commitment to Transcend’s mission of transforming education, with a passion for creating extraordinary learning for all.
A commitment to comprehensive data collection and analysis.
Eagerness to embrace and live into Transcend’s core values.
Outstanding project management and organizational skills that allow you to gather and organize multiple work streams and logistics efficiently. You can keep yourself and a wide range of other project members and stakeholders on task and on track while preserving a positive and strong collaborative vibe!
Exceptional critical thinking, including the ability to take in a lot of data and information, analyze and make sense of it, and present trends and learnings in ways that steward and support strong, inclusive decision-making.
Comfort in navigating highly programmatic and highly technical stakeholders and spaces with an ability to serve as the bridge and translator between these two worlds.
An ability to communicate effectively across various modalities - written, verbally, and through visuals - to bring stakeholders along in the process.
A deep curiosity and eagerness to learn from others
An ability to listen deeply, synthesize information, and ask great questions to gain a deeper understanding of the projects at hand
A “can do it!” attitude to the work and are comfortable shifting and adjusting to the conditions and constraints of the moment.
Comfort and familiarity with independently gathering requirements, mapping process flows, stewarding the research and selection process for new solutions/tool/vendors, etc.
Experience with a variety of tools and solutions (familiarity with Notion is a plus) and with leading the implementation of new tools and solutions to address business needs and opportunities.

Perks and Benefits

Transcend is committed to providing our colleagues with a competitive benefits package. Transcend offers medical, dental, and vision coverage options, org-wide holidays, paid time off, paid parental leave, professional development opportunities, and fully remote work. We take pride in our collaborative environment, exceptional team, and shared commitment to principled, impactful work.

Join Us!

We are an experienced team focused on extraordinary learning for all. We welcome candidates who are passionate about ensuring that all students thrive.

Original Job Description