Senior Business Analyst / Product Consultant (Defence)

Kainos; Budock Water; On-site; GBP 40,000 - 60,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading technology consultancy in the UK is looking for a Product Consultant (Senior Associate) to ensure team alignment with business needs and facilitate the delivery of user-centric solutions. The ideal candidate will have consulting experience in bespoke software delivery, excellent stakeholder management skills, and a strong grasp of Agile methodologies. The role involves articulating business requirements and facilitating collaborative processes within multi-disciplinary teams, providing a dynamic and impactful work environment.

Qualifications

• Experience in client‑facing consulting and working as part of an agile team.
• Proficient in facilitating small group discussions.
• Good commercial awareness, delivering within project constraints.

Responsibilities

• Ensure understanding of business needs for customer solutions.
• Facilitate analysis and design of cost-effective software solutions.
• Translate business requirements into functional requirements.

Skills

Experience in bespoke software delivery

Active Security Clearance

Experience in the public defence sector

Stakeholder management

User story creation skills

Business process modelling skills

Agile and Waterfall methodologies

Verbal and written communication skills

Job description

As a Product Consultant (Senior Associate) in Kainos, you will be responsible for ensuring that your team has a good understanding of business needs so that our customer solutions meet the needs of them and their users. You will be responsible for articulating problems and processes in ways understood by all stakeholders – both business and technical – and for facilitating the analysis and design of cost‑effective software solutions that impact users worldwide.

Minimum Requirements

• Experience in bespoke software delivery, operating as part of an agile team for an external customer; client‑facing consulting experience is a must‑have.
• Active Security Clearance.
• Experience in the public defence sector.
• Extensive experience in a relevant commercial or technical environment.
• Broad business and technology understanding and a proven awareness of industry trends.
• Demonstrable experience of delivering as part of an agile team.
• Proficient in stakeholder management, sensitive to the needs of each stakeholder yet comfortable to challenge where appropriate.
• Excellent user story creation skills, articulating business needs in a format that is easily consumable by the scrum team (including backlog management, refinement sessions, customer pre‑sales, requirements, priorities and value).
• Strong business process modelling skills, capturing existing processes, designing new processes and presenting processes to achieve buy‑in.
• Competent facilitator of small groups to achieve focused outcomes (e.g., dev teams, product approval committee, delivery manager).
• Highly effective at translating business requirements into cost‑effective functional requirements.
• Good commercial awareness, always delivering within project constraints.
• Strong understanding of Agile and Waterfall Project Management delivery methodologies.
• Able to work flexibly and to tight deadlines.
• Proven ability to work effectively in a multi‑disciplinary team.
• Good verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to communicate with a variety of stakeholders.

Desirable

• Experience of software development or related problem‑solving discipline.
• Experience of working on client site, delivering high quality digital products.
• Stakeholder management experience.
• Demonstrated ability in managing, mentoring and coaching team members and the wider community.
• Experience mentoring customer consultants on good story‑writing techniques.
• Agile and Waterfall project experience across a range of methodologies and frameworks (e.g., Waterfall, Scrum, Kanban).
• Active participant in communities of interest (e.g., online groups, speaking at conferences).

At Kainos, we believe in the power of diversity, equity and inclusion. We are committed to building a team that is as diverse as the world we live in, where everyone is valued, respected, and given an equal chance to thrive. We actively seek out talented people from all backgrounds, regardless of age, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, disability or any other characteristic that makes them who they are.