Job description
ABOUT ALU
ALU provides higher education for a higher purpose. Our students declare missions, not majors.
They develop the real-world skills to take on the world’s most pressing challenges. And they take ownership of their learning from day one through our peer and student-led approach – because ALU believes in the power and agency of young people to start shaping the future right now.
Together with a world-class faculty and staff, our students are igniting a ripple of positive impact across Africa and the world.
We are dedicated to fostering an open yet secure environment, balancing the safety of students, staff, and visitors with respect for individual rights, and safeguarding responsibilities.
HOW WE WORK
The ALU Team works in starkly different ways to traditional academic bureaucracies. We approach education from first principles, empower individuals to design, test, and implement creative new ideas, and work closely together to craft transformative learning experiences. We are deeply passionate about our students and excited by the challenge of building something entirely new.
The African Leadership University is committed to ensuring the safety and Well-being of all students under our care. As part of this commitment , we have a comprehensive safeguarding policy in place , which outlines our Zero-tolerance approach to any violation of safeguarding.
ABOUT THE ROLE
We’re looking for a Senior Business Analyst to join the Transformation Office and help translate ALU’s vision into actionable, high-quality digital solutions. This is a strategic role that blends strong analytical thinking, user-centered design, Agile expertise, and quality assurance leadership. You will act as a bridge between business stakeholders and the tech team, ensuring clarity, accuracy, and value in everything we build.
This person will also play a key role in coaching junior team members into effective Business Analysts, helping to raise the bar across the team.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead the elicitation, analysis and documentation of business requirements across cross-functional teams.
- Translate business requirements into clear and concise user stories with thorough acceptance criteria using tools like Jira.
- Champion Agile methodologies within the team—facilitating ceremonies, supporting sprint planning, and refining the backlog.
- Serve as the internal QA gatekeeper, ensuring stories are well-defined, testable and meet business objectives.
- Collaborate closely with UX/UI designers, developers and QA teams to ensure requirements are user-friendly and technically feasible.
- Drive requirements gathering and system integration efforts involving Salesforce (e.g. CRM, Marketing Cloud, SIS) and ERP platforms like Oracle NetSuite across business units such as Finance, Admissions, Marketing and Procurement.
- Create clear, standardized process maps using BPMN or similar notation to document current and future state workflows.
- Test functionality created to ensure system requirements and configurations are optimized to support end-to-end business processes across platforms.
- Ask the right questions to challenge assumptions and uncover true business needs.
- Provide leadership and oversight for QA testers, and perform hands-on validation of delivered features.
- Act as a mentor to junior BAs, helping build their capabilities and encouraging a culture of continuous improvement.
Qualifications
- 7+ years of experience in Business Analysis, preferably in a digital product or enterprise transformation context
- Strong experience writing user stories, acceptance criteria, and managing product backlogs in Agile environments
- Demonstrated ability to facilitate requirement-gathering sessions and translate ideas into functional specifications
- Hands-on experience working with Salesforce (CRM, SIS or Marketing Cloud) and ERP systems such as Oracle NetSuite
- Strong proficiency in process mapping using standards such as BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) or similar frameworks
- Experience integrating business workflows across CRM, Student Information Systems and finance systems
- Proven track record working closely with software development and QA teams
- Excellent analytical skills and attention to detail, particularly in user experience and interface design
- Confident communicator who can influence, challenge, and drive alignment among diverse stakeholders
- Experience with tools like Jira (or equivalents)
- Bonus: Experience in EdTech or nonprofit/mission-driven organizations
