Head of Business/System Analysis

Head of Business/System Analysis

Company Introduction

First Digital Finance Corporation is a Fintech company based in Manila, Philippines. Our mission is to drive financial innovation in the Philippines by leveraging AI and digital processes to provide Filipino consumers with easier and more affordable access to credit and banking services. We operate across a suite of products — including consumer credit (Billease), digital banking (savings accounts, transfers, QR payments), and a growing microservice platform — serving millions of users at scale.

Our founders are a team of experienced professionals with both local and international backgrounds in banking, consulting, and technology.

Role Overview

We are looking for a seasoned Head of Business/System Analysis to lead and scale our BA/SA function within the Engineering organization. This is a senior leadership role with direct ownership over a team of approximately 10 Business/System Analysts embedded across multiple product domains.

You will serve as the critical bridge between business stakeholders, product owners, and engineering teams — ensuring that complex business needs are translated into clear, actionable, and well-structured system specifications. You will also be responsible for elevating the overall quality, consistency, and depth of analysis practice across the organization.

This role is ideal for someone who has grown from hands-on BA/SA work into a leadership position and is passionate about building a high-performing, process-driven team in a fast-moving fintech environment.

Responsibilities

Team Leadership & Management

- Lead, mentor, and grow a team of ~10 Business/System Analysts across multiple product squads.

- Define the team structure, roles, and career progression paths for individual contributors.

- Conduct regular 1:1s, performance reviews, and develop individual growth plans.

- Hire, onboard, and retain top BA/SA talent aligned with the company's growth trajectory.

- Build a collaborative, accountable, and knowledge-sharing team culture.

Analysis Practice & Standards

- Define and enforce standards, templates, and best practices for business analysis, system design, and documentation (requirements specs, PRDs, BRDs, API contracts, BPMN flows, data models).

- Drive consistency and quality across all analytical outputs — from user stories to technical solution designs.

- Establish and maintain a documentation culture that keeps knowledge accessible and up to date across the 50+ microservice landscape.

- Champion the use of modern BA tools and frameworks (Figma, BPMN, OpenAPI/Swagger, Confluence-style wikis, ClickUp).

Stakeholder Alignment

- Act as the primary point of contact for C-level and senior stakeholders seeking clarity on system capabilities and business requirements.

- Facilitate discovery sessions, requirement workshops, and design reviews with business, product, and engineering teams.

- Translate ambiguous business goals into structured, testable, and implementable system specifications.

- Proactively manage stakeholder expectations around scope, dependencies, and delivery timelines.

Cross-Functional Delivery

- Oversee the BA/SA contribution across the full product development lifecycle — from discovery through delivery and post-release evaluation.

- Partner closely with Engineering Managers, Product Owners, and QA leads to ensure requirement clarity and reduce rework.

- Review and sign off on functional and non-functional requirements for high-impact or complex initiatives.

- Identify systemic gaps, integration risks, and ambiguity early in the delivery pipeline.

Process Improvement & Governance

- Continuously assess and improve how requirements are gathered, tracked, communicated, and validated.

- Establish quality gates and review checkpoints within the delivery workflow.

- Drive retrospective processes within the BA team to continuously improve throughput and impact.

- Monitor team delivery metrics and produce reporting for engineering leadership.

Requirements

Experience

- 5+ years of experience in Business Analysis, System Analysis, or a closely related discipline.

- 3+ years in a leadership or management role overseeing a team of analysts or cross-functional contributors.

- Proven experience working in a product-driven, high-scale technology environment — preferably fintech, banking, or financial services.

- Track record of managing multiple concurrent initiatives across complex domain landscapes.

Business Analysis Skills

- Expert-level proficiency in requirements elicitation, stakeholder management, and documentation.

- Deep experience producing business requirements documents (BRDs), product requirements documents (PRDs), functional specifications, and test scenarios.

- Solid understanding of software development lifecycle (SDLC) methodologies — Agile, Scrum, Kanban.

- Strong facilitation skills: workshops, discovery sessions, design reviews.

Technical Depth

- Comfortable reading and producing API specifications (REST, OpenAPI/Swagger).

- Working knowledge of BPMN for business process modeling.

- Understanding of microservice architecture and distributed systems design.

- Proficiency in SQL for data analysis and validation.

- Ability to engage meaningfully in technical discussions with engineering teams (data modeling, integration flows, event-driven systems).

- Familiarity with feature flags, rollout strategies, and system fallback design

Leadership & Soft Skills

- Strong people manager with demonstrated ability to coach, give feedback, and develop talent.

- Excellent written and verbal communication skills — able to produce clear documentation and present to senior stakeholders.

- High attention to detail without losing sight of the bigger picture.

- Resilient, pragmatic, and comfortable operating in ambiguity.

- Data-driven mindset — uses metrics to track team performance and delivery health.

Nice-to-Have Skills

- Experience in digital banking or lending products.

- Familiarity with core banking platforms.

- Knowledge of KYC/AML compliance requirements and regulatory frameworks.

- Experience with event-driven architectures and message queuing systems (Kafka, RabbitMQ).

- Background in data analytics, BI tooling, or working with data teams.

- Exposure to AI-assisted analysis workflows or prompt-based tooling for documentation generation.

- Experience working with remote or distributed teams across time zones.

Tech Stack (Inferred)

Based on our product and engineering context, the Head of BA/SA will work across the following technology landscape:

| Category | Technologies 

| Backend | Python (Django, FastAPI, Flask), REST APIs, OpenAPI/Swagger |

| Databases | PostgreSQL, data modeling, SQL |

| Mobile | Android (Kotlin/Jetpack Compose), iOS |

| Frontend | Web (React/Angular-based), Figma (UI/UX design) |

| Architecture | Microservices (~50 services), event-driven (RabbitMQ, Kafka) |

| Infrastructure | AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD |

| Core Banking | Mifos, savings account services, credit systems |

| Payments | QRPH, PESONet, e-wallets, Xendit |

| Process Tools | BPMN, ClickUp, Figma, GitLab |

| Documentation | OpenAPI (Swagger), Markdown, PRD/BRD templates |

Success Metrics / KPIs

The Head of BA/SA will be evaluated against the following indicators of success:

Team Performance

- Team utilization and capacity alignment across product squads.

- Analyst retention rate and career progression velocity.

- Time-to-onboard new analysts to full productivity.

Delivery Quality

- Reduction in requirement-related rework and scope churn during sprints.

- Defect rate attributable to incomplete or ambiguous requirements (tracked in QA).

- On-time delivery rate for BA-owned deliverables (specs, solution docs, test cases).

Documentation & Standards

- Coverage and freshness of system documentation across active services.

- Adoption rate of standardized templates and documentation practices across the team.

- Stakeholder satisfaction with BA outputs (measured via periodic surveys).

Business Impact

- Stakeholder satisfaction score (business and engineering counterparts).

- Analyst contribution to successful discovery-to-delivery cycles for key initiatives.

- Identification and escalation of high-risk ambiguities before development begins.