Senior Salesforce Business Analyst

Elsevier; Oxford; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

Elsevier is seeking a Senior Business Analyst to drive AI innovation across the Salesforce ecosystem, Data Cloud, and MCP-based integrations. You will partner with business units to identify value opportunities, gather requirements, and deliver AI-enabled solutions that streamline processes and reduce costs.

In this role, you will translate business needs into technical requirements, facilitate workshops, and work with cross-functional teams to ensure successful delivery of AI agent workflows

Qualifications

• Proven experience in process modelling (BPMN) and translating requirements into user stories and acceptance criteria.
• Hands-on Salesforce experience (Sales Cloud/Service Cloud); familiarity with Agentforce and Data Cloud (Data 360).
• Knowledge of AI concepts (prompt engineering, RAG, MCP) and grounding AI on trustworthy data.

Responsibilities

• Identify AI/agentic opportunities across Salesforce landscape and adjacent platforms.
• Document current and future-state business processes and user stories with clear acceptance criteria.
• Collaborate with Salesforce, data engineering, and AI/ML teams to deliver AI agent workflows and integrations.
• Plan workshops to scope AI use cases and align stakeholders on priorities.
• Communicate trade-offs and maintain stakeholder expectations for AI-driven solutions.

Skills

BPMN

Process modelling

Salesforce

AI/Agentic concepts

Agile

Scrum

Kanban

Data analytics

SQL

Python

Tools

Jira

Confluence

Slack

Microsoft Office

Microsoft Teams

Job description

Senior Business Analyst – AI Innovation About Our Team Digital Business Solutions (DBS) delivers innovation and solves customer and business problems by leveraging the power of technology, data, and — increasingly — AI. Within DBS, the AI Innovation team focuses specifically on identifying and delivering agentic and generative AI capabilities across our Salesforce ecosystem and adjacent platforms. We partner with customers, authors, editors, and Elsevier colleagues to drive intelligent automation, frictionless personalised experiences, and streamlined processes that support cost optimisation and growth. We provide the expertise to understand business challenges and translate them into practical, responsible AI-enabled solutions.

About the Role The Senior Business Analyst will work with business units and technology teams to identify, scope, and deliver AI innovation opportunities across our Salesforce platform landscape — including Salesforce Agentforce, Data Cloud (Data 360), and Model Context Protocol (MCP)-based integrations, as well as adjacent AI tooling. The role focuses on hunting for value opportunities for sales teams; understanding the data and process foundations required to ground AI agents; and defining requirements and functional specifications that bridge business needs with emerging AI capabilities.

Responsibilities

• Partner with business and product teams to identify opportunities where AI agents, automation, and data unification can remove friction, reduce cost, or improve customer/employee experience
• Document current-state business processes and design future-state processes that incorporate Salesforce Agentforce agents, Data Cloud (Data 360), and MCP-based integrations
• Gather business requirements, high-level user stories, and acceptance criteria for AI agent workflows — including agent actions, guardrails, escalation paths, and human-in-the-loop checkpoints
• Assess data readiness for AI use cases (data quality, identity resolution, harmonisation) in partnership with data engineering teams supporting Data 360
• Plan and facilitate workshops to scope AI/agentic use cases, evaluate feasibility, and align stakeholders on priority and sequencing
• Work with technology teams (Salesforce, data engineering, AI/ML engineers) to produce detailed user stories and acceptance criteria that support development and QA, including for Agentforce agent builds and MCP server/tool integrations
• Maintain stakeholder expectations, communicate trade-offs of AI-driven solutions (accuracy, latency, cost, risk), and raise issues to project/product managers as needed
• Develop "trusted advisor" relationships with senior stakeholders through effective communication about AI capabilities, limitations, and responsible use
• Perform analysis on existing systems and processes to identify where AI/agentic solutions are technically and commercially viable versus where traditional automation is a better fit
• Track the evolving Agentforce, Data Cloud, and MCP/agentic-AI landscape, and translate relevant developments into concrete opportunities for the business
• Support change management and user adoption for AI-driven process changes, including documentation and enablement materials

Requirements

• Proven experience in process modelling (BPMN standard), eliciting business requirements, and translating them into clear user stories and acceptance criteria
• Hands-on experience with the Salesforce platform (Sales Cloud / Service Cloud); working knowledge of, or strong interest in, Salesforce Agentforce and Data Cloud (Data 360)
• Working familiarity with core AI/agentic concepts — prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), tool/function calling, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) — sufficient to translate business needs into technical requirements
• Understanding of data architecture fundamentals (data unification, identity resolution, data quality) as they relate to grounding AI agents on trustworthy data
• Solid understanding of software development methodologies, platforms, and tools, including how AI/agentic components fit into standard SDLC
• Demonstrated ability to plan and facilitate small to medium-sized workshops, including cross-functional AI use-case discovery sessions
• Strong verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to translate complex AI/technical concepts for non-technical stakeholders and vice versa
• Hands-on experience working in agile environments using recognised delivery frameworks such as Agile, Scrum, and Kanban
• Experience performing the Business Analyst role across the full software development lifecycle
• Experience with Lead-to-Cash processes and Salesforce
• Exposure to data analytics and data-driven decision-making, and familiarity with tools such as Jira, Confluence, Slack, Microsoft Office, and Microsoft Teams
• A genuine curiosity about AI and a habit of continuous learning — this space moves fast, and the role requires staying current
• Nice to Have Exposure to Salesforce Einstein, Copilot Studio, or comparable generative AI platform features
• Basic SQL or Python skills for exploring data sets and validating AI/data outputs
• Awareness of responsible AI principles (bias, privacy, explainability, human oversight)
• Salesforce certifications (e.g., AI Associate, Agentforce Specialist) or equivalent demonstrated learning

Work in a Way That Works for You

We promote a healthy work/life balance across the organisation. We offer an appealing working prospect for our people. With numerous wellbeing initiatives, shared parental leave, study assistance, and sabbaticals, we will help you meet your immediate responsibilities and your long-term goals.

Working Pattern

Working flexible hours - flexing the times when you work in the day to help you fit everything in and work when you are the most productive.

About the Business

A global leader in information and analytics, we help researchers and healthcare professionals advance science and improve health outcomes for the benefit of society. Building on our publishing heritage, we combine quality information and vast data sets with analytics to support visionary science and research, health education and interactive learning, as well as exceptional healthcare and clinical practice. At Elsevier, your work contributes to the world's grand challenges and a more sustainable future. We harness innovative technologies to support science and healthcare to partner for a better world. We know your well-being and happiness are key to a long and successful career. We are delighted to offer country specific benefits.

We are an equal opportunity employer: qualified applicants are considered for and treated during employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, sex, national origin, citizenship status, disability status, protected veteran status, age, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law.

USA Job Seekers: EEO Know Your Rights.

We believe that by working together with the communities we serve, we can shape human progress to go further, happen faster, and benefit all. We support continuous discovery and uphold the highest standards of content integrity, reliability, and reproducibility so the communities we serve can advance their field of science, healthcare or innovation with confidence. By combining high-quality content with powerful analytics, we transform complexity into clarity and deliver mission-critical insights that help professionals make better decisions when it matters most. We deliver insights that help research institutions, governments, and funders achieve their goals. We help researchers discover and share knowledge, collaborate, and accelerate innovation. We help librarians provide verified, quality information to universities. We help innovators turn knowledge into new products. We help health professionals improve patient care and educators train the next generation of doctors and nurses. Connecting quality content and innovative technologies, we make progress go further and happen faster. And by championing inclusion and sustainability, we ensure progress benefits all. With 9,500 employees, over 2,300 technologists in 5 major tech hubs, and more than 60 locations across the globe, we are committed to supporting the scientific and healthcare communities around the world. We offer a diverse range of opportunities across technology, commercial, business, and early career jobs. If you are looking for a career that inspires progress in science, innovation and health, and allows you to grow every day, find your team at Elsevier.

Elsevier is part of RELX Group.