IT Business Lead Analyst

About the role

Are you looking for a career move that will put you at the heart of a global financial institution? By Joining Citi, you will become part of a global organisation whose mission is to serve as a trusted partner to our clients by responsibly providing financial services that enable growth and economic progress.

Team / Role Overview

The IT Business Analyst Lead is a senior-level delivery leader who owns the end-to-end Product/Project Delivery Lifecycle (PDLC) – translating business strategy into actionable requirements, orchestrating cross-functional stakeholders, and driving technology solutions from ideation through deployment and adoption. This role goes beyond traditional liaison work, actively shaping AI and data-driven initiatives, partners with data science and engineering teams to validate model-driven outcomes against business value, and champions agile, iterative delivery practices across the value stream. As a senior individual contributor with informal leadership responsibilities, this person is accountable for delivery of critical & strategic technical builds.

What you’ll do

• Own requirements end-to-end across the PDLC — leading discovery, elaboration, backlog grooming, UAT, and post-launch validation for complex, high-impact initiatives, ensuring traceability from business objective to delivered feature.
• Drive AI/ML use case definition — partnering with data scientists and ML engineers to scope feasible AI use cases, define success metrics, and translate model outputs into business-consumable requirements and acceptance criteria.
• Evaluate AI/data solution outputs against business need — critically assessing model performance, bias, explainability, and fit-for-purpose before recommending production rollout, and flagging gaps to technical teams.
• Champion agile ceremonies and practices — facilitating or actively contributing to sprint planning, backlog refinement, retrospectives, and stand‑ups, while maintaining a well‑prioritized, outcome‑aligned product backlog.
• Orchestrate multi‑stakeholder alignment — coordinating across business sponsors, technology teams, data governance, risk, and compliance functions to keep initiatives moving and unblock cross‑team dependencies.
• Identify, quantify, and mitigate delivery and technology risk — proactively surfacing risks and business impacts tied to system changes or AI deployments, and proposing pragmatic mitigation strategies to leadership.
• Assess emerging technology and evolving business needs — benchmarking new IT and AI capabilities against current systems and industry standards to recommend enhancements, replatforming, or process redesign.
• Deliver sophisticated, data‑informed analysis — applying interpretive and analytical thinking to define ambiguous problems, model alternative solutions, and influence strategic functional and technology decisions.
• Guide and mentor junior analysts — overseeing day‑to‑day work allocation, coaching on BA best practices and agile delivery, and elevating the analytical capability of the broader team without formal line‑management authority.
• Lead executive and cross‑functional stakeholder communication — translating technical and AI‑related complexity into clear, decision‑ready narratives for senior business and technology leadership, and driving consensus on trade‑offs, roadmaps, and OKRs.
• Support digital transformation initiatives — identifying opportunities to modernize legacy processes through automation, AI augmentation, and data‑driven decision‑making, and building the business case for change.
• Uphold risk, ethics, and regulatory discipline — exercising sound judgment in every business decision with particular attention to the firm’s reputation, safeguarding Citigroup, its clients, and its assets; driving compliance with applicable laws, regulations, and internal policy (including responsible and ethical AI governance); and escalating and reporting control issues with transparency.

What we’ll need from you

• 6–10 years of experience as a Business Analyst or in a related delivery leadership role, including experience across full PDLC/SDLC cycles in an agile environment.
• Demonstrated experience contributing to or leading AI/ML or data‑driven projects, including requirements definition and collaboration with data science teams.
• Proficiency in MS Office (Word, Excel, Visio, PowerPoint), with advanced Excel skills for data analysis, and familiarity with agile tooling (e.g., Jira, Confluence, Azure DevOps).
• Comprehensive knowledge of business analysis principles, including requirements elicitation, process mapping, user story writing, and acceptance criteria definition.
• Strong track record of leading cross‑functional teams and communicating effectively with executive‑level stakeholders to drive alignment and decision‑making.

Preferred Qualifications

• Working knowledge of data science and AI/ML concepts (model lifecycle, data quality, bias/explainability, MLOps) sufficient to partner credibly with technical teams.
• Experience with product management practices such as OKR‑setting, value‑stream mapping, and product backlog prioritization frameworks.
• Familiarity with data governance, model risk management, and responsible AI frameworks within a regulated industry.

Education

Bachelor's degree/University degree or equivalent experience. Master's degree preferred.

Benefits

• By joining Citi London you will not only be part of a business casual workplace with a hybrid working model (up to 2 days working at home per week), but also receive a competitive base salary (which is annually reviewed), and enjoy a whole host of additional benefits such as;
• Generous holiday allowance starting at 27 days plus bank holidays; increasing with tenure
• A discretional annual performance related bonus
• Private medical insurance packages to suit your personal circumstances
• Employee Assistance Program
• Pension Plan
• Paid Parental Leave
• Special discounts for employees, family, and friends
• Access to an array of learning and development resources

Alongside these benefits Citi is committed to ensuring our workplace is where everyone feels comfortable coming to work as their whole self every day. We want the best talent around the world to be energized to join us, motivated to stay, and empowered to thrive.

Job Family Group: Technology

Job Family: Business Analysis / Client Services

Time Type: Full time

Most Relevant Skills Please see the requirements listed above.

Other Relevant Skills For complementary skills, please see above and/or contact the recruiter.

Citi is an equal opportunity employer, and qualified candidates will receive consideration without regard to their race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, status as a protected veteran, or any other characteristic protected by law. If you are a person with a disability and need a reasonable accommodation to use our search tools and/or apply for a career opportunity review Accessibility at Citi. View Citi’s EEO Policy Statement and the Know Your Rights poster.

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