Lead Technical Business Analyst

Apex IT Services, Inc.; Bethesda (MD); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Apex IT Services, Inc. seeks a Principal / Lead Technical Business Analyst to drive strategy and design for enterprise portals and CMS-enabled experiences from Bethesda, MD.

This role combines product translation with technical leadership across UI/UX, architecture, and engineering. You will own requirements, Jira governance, and release coordination while aligning with stakeholders and ensuring high performance, security, and usability standards.

Qualifications

• 12+ years as Technical/Systems Analyst or Scrum Master in corporate environments.
• 3+ years with Sanity CMS or similar headless CMS.
• Expert Jira admin with Advanced Roadmaps and backlog governance.
• Strong web architecture knowledge: Jamstack, AWS, Next.js/React.
• Excellent stakeholder communication and collaboration skills.

Responsibilities

• Translate commercial product needs into technical specs (APIs, content schemas).
• Design headless content models in Sanity, define workflows and localization rules.
• Structure Jira for Epics, Features, components, and roadmaps.
• Write detailed technical user stories with acceptance criteria (BDD/Given-When-Then).
• Facilitate Scrum ceremonies and maintain team velocity.
• Coordinate release planning, deployments, and post-launch validation.
• Map backend integrations between Sanity front-end and CRMs/ERPs/ecommerce tools.
• Define and coordinate UAT and validation with stakeholders.

Skills

Stakeholder communication

Agile / Scrum

Backlog management

Requirements elicitation

Tools

Jira

Sanity CMS

GraphQL

REST APIs

OIDC / SAML / OAuth

Job description

We are immediately looking for Lead Technical Business Analyst _ Remote (Weekly 3 days onsite Bethesda, MD) with one of our direct clients.

Job Title: Principal / Lead Technical Business Analyst (Portals & CMS)

Location: Bethesda, MD (Weekly 3 days onsite)

Job Description:

• We are seeking a highly seasoned Lead Technical Business Analyst with a minimum of 12 years of commercial IT experience to drive the strategy, design, and execution of our enterprise-level public portals, corporate intranets, and digital experiences. This role sits entirely within our commercial business division. A major focus of this position will be leveraging Sanity CMS to architect modern, flexible content models and decoupled web frameworks. You will act as the key technical bridge between commercial product managers, UI/UX designers, enterprise architects, and engineering teams to transform creative digital concepts into scalable technical realities.

Key Responsibilities

• Commercial Product Translation: Elicit, analyze, and document complex functional and non-functional requirements, turning commercial product visions into clear technical specifications (API payloads, content schemas, system integration flows).
• Sanity CMS & Portal Strategy: Partner with architects to design headless content models, document structures, and schemas within Sanity. Define structured content workflows, localization rules, and custom studio configurations to optimize the editorial experience.
• Jira Structuring & Backlog Health: Design, organize, and maintain the Jira ecosystem structure (including Epics, Features, components, and custom fields). Establish standard practices for backlog hygiene, cross-team roadmap visualization, and technical dependency tracking.
• Technical Story Writing: Author highly detailed, technical user stories. Craft clear, testable Acceptance Criteria using behavioral frameworks (e.g., Given-When-Then / BDD syntax) that address edge cases, Sanity webhook setups, API payloads, validation rules, and error handling.
• Scrum Facilitation & Agile Delivery: Lead and facilitate core Agile ceremonies—including Daily Standups, Sprint Planning, Backlog Refinement, and Retrospectives—ensuring the engineering team maintains a steady velocity and roadblocks are proactively removed.
• Release Management Coordination: Partner with DevOps, Release Engineers, and Product Owners to plan, schedule, and track portal features through the delivery pipeline. Manage release notes, coordinate production deployments, and oversee post-launch verification for content and code updates.
• Integrations & Architecture Collaboration: Map complex backend integrations between the Sanity-powered front-end portal and commercial ecosystems (e.g., CRMs like Salesforce, ERPs, e-commerce gateways, and marketing automation tools).
• UAT & Validation: Define the commercial User Acceptance Testing (UAT) strategy, coordinate validation with business stakeholders, and ensure digital experiences meet strict performance, usability, and brand benchmarks.

Required Qualifications & Technical Skills

• Experience: 12+ years as a Technical Business Analyst, Systems Analyst, or Scrum Master/Product Owner in commercial, corporate, or enterprise-scale environments.
• Headless CMS Expertise: At least 3+ years of specific experience working with Sanity CMS (or closely related modern headless platforms like Contentful, Strapi, or Contentstack). Proven understanding of structured content, GROQ/GraphQL querying, and Sanity Studio configuration.
• Jira & Agile Expertise: Advanced proficiency in Jira administration and structuring (building filters, creating custom dashboards, configuring workflows, and utilizing Jira Advanced Roadmaps). Expert-level capability in breaking down monolith technical requirements into clean, manageable vertical user slices.
• Technical Skills: Strong understanding of modern web architectures, including Jamstack, serverless, cloud platforms (AWS), and modern front-end frameworks (e.g., Next.js, React). Proficient in web fundamentals: RESTful and GraphQL APIs, JSON, HTML/CSS, and identity solutions (OAuth, OpenID Connect, SAML, SSO). Solid data literacy, including using SQL or modern graph query languages for data mapping and analysis.
• Soft Skills: Exceptional stakeholder communication skills with a proven track record of managing competing priorities among commercial business leaders, content editors, and engineering teams.