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Business Analyst

Strategic Design

Be at the heart of helping our customers achieve amazing things with software and data!

We are Ascent! and we help our customers solve problems, elevate, and do existing things better. 

We are on a mission to help our customers connect data, software, and purpose to create extraordinary outcomes. You could say we are a digital transformation business.

We specialize in software product development, analytics, data science, IoT solutions, machine learning, DevOps optimization, and modernization of applications, data, and platforms.

We work with incredible clients in all types of industries such as smart home devices, space exploration, beer to manufacturing, finance, ecology, and logistics. We work with some of the sharpest minds in the brightest businesses and we employ the sharpest minds too!

About the role

As our Business Analysts you will break down complex problems into clear, simplified backlog work items that deliver demonstrable client value as early as possible. You articulate explanations and vision, leveraging use-case examples for less technical audiences. At Ascent, we take extra care to work closely with our customer stakeholders to ensure we create great user experience, and our business analysts will collaborate with UX specialists where needed to ensure we’re creating those “wow” moments for customers.

As a Business Analyst at Ascent, you’ll work with interesting customers, across diverse sectors, and complex challenges, on both major transformations (typically 6-18 months) and smaller scope engagements. This is a critical customer-facing role that will require you to understand our customer business deeply, allowing you to provide value by recommending impactful solutions through effective communication with the technical team. 

Your role will also be to articulate the long-term solution vision for the customer and development team. You will manage the expectations of business and technical stakeholders, driving refinement sessions that facilitate understanding of the user stories and estimate the stories accurately.

What you'll do

Discover information and seek out important facts and points of view, by asking questions in a way that enables problem visibility and solution generation
Be a great relationship builder and constructive negotiator - someone everyone is happy to talk to about the project
Carry out demos with users and stakeholders to validate concepts that are being developed
Ensure that release notes are written in a format that’s clear and understood by the end-users and stakeholders
Empathize with stakeholders and customers, and be able to articulate their point of view to development teams

At times you might be working with unclear requirements from customers, so a solution focused character will thrive in this position as you’ll need to use structured techniques to drive clarity, customer confidence, and problem resolutions.

You need to ensure that there are enough items ready for development to maximize the team’s throughput during the project. You’ll define sprint goals that ensure that the team is focusing on the right thing. You will work with the team to unblock any impediments that might occur during the sprint and validate the developed items to ensure they are aligned with what we said we’d achieve.

Skills and Experience

Service industry background, experience as a business analyst, product owner or similar role
Knowledge and use of Azure DevOps (or another backlog management tools e.g. Jira)
Knowledge and use of Balsamiq (or other mock-ups tools e.g., Figma, Adobe XD)
Knowledge and use of Miro
Solution focused, consultative with experience showing clients demos and strong relationship building skills
Desirable if you have been in a technical role (but not a must have)
Deep understanding of software development is important
Exceptionally strong English communication, both written and verbal

Working at Ascent

Hybrid working (We have offices in Bristol or London however this role involves being local enough to meet clients when needed rather than going into the office)
Life assurance
Wellness benefits
Pension contribution
Competitive Salary

Our offices are places to connect and collaborate with colleagues, with socials and regular get togethers. We take your development and growth seriously, with plenty of opportunities to acquire skills and get certified.

Ascent is an equal opportunities employer. We take intentional steps to ensure inclusion and belonging are something real here, not just something we talk about. No person will be treated less favourably because of their gender, pregnancy, and maternity status, marital or civil partnership status, sexual orientation, race, nationality, ethnic origin, age, religion or belief, or disability status. If you require any reasonable accommodation, please let us know when you apply.

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Technical Architect (Data specialisation)

Solutions

If you like taking ownership of challenges and providing effective solutions, join us at Ascent and start your Architect journey!

About the role

The technical architects report to the Chief Engineer and form part of a team of highly skilled technical people who in turn form part of the Solutions team at Ascent. The Solutions team complements our sales department, running technical pre-sales initiatives and solution assessments that inform our customers of the best technical approach to their business problems.

In delivery, they assist project teams with technical knowledge and expertise and guide architectural discussions and decisions. They are more heavily involved in projects in the initial stages of discovery and project initiation and help in designing an initial architecture for the solution. They remain close to the team during development and are involved in critical junctures that require decisions to be taken at an architectural level.

The technical architects leverage their experience to ensure that the technical solution is being built correctly, and where needed assist in change.

In view of our focus on Azure and in line with our strategic partnership with Microsoft, technical architects will predominantly design solutions on Azure that leverage modern PaaS offerings.

What you’ll do

The main aim of the technical architect is to ensure that the project is built using the right technology and following sound architectural patterns that ensure that both the functional and non-functional requirements are met, maximizing business value. To this end, the technical architect’s success is measured by ensuring that within projects there is a high and constant measure of:

Good quality architecture that ensures the solution being built covers both functional and non-functional requirements.
The team has the available knowledge around new technologies to enable them to develop with confidence.
Technical debt is addressed using best practices to keep the code base healthy.

Responsibilities

Be present with the development team on projects, particularly in the initial and/or transformational stages, to ensure that the right architectural choices are being made
Be involved in pre-sales activities with new and existing clients to provide architectural input to discussions and proposals
Provide guidance and direction with architectural decisions throughout the project lifetime
Provide hands-on assistance to teams, possibly for an extended period, to bootstrap complex solutions
Spend 30–70% of your time in delivery
Be involved in multiple projects concurrently (based on time allocation, up to 3 projects)
Establish and promote coding standards and best practices
Help in harmonizing technologies across the organization
Keep up to date and act as an internal evangelist for Azure technologies in view of our partnership with Microsoft

Required Core Skills

Data Architects are experienced data engineers who are very comfortable with data modeling, building data warehouses, and other data solutions on Azure. They are comfortable with technologies like Data Factory, Databricks, and Azure Synapse and have around 7 years of senior engineering experience with extensive depth and wide coverage of technical expertise such as:

Excellent problem-solving skills
Ability to identify potential technical issues early on and reassess accordingly
Ability to architect the project keeping both functional and non-functional requirements in mind
Provide coaching and training.
Ability to transform functional and non-functional requirements into a desirable technical architecture.
Strong engineering skills
Keep up to date with technologies and learn new technologies related to Azure area of specialisation

Experience in the following

Knowledge of architectural and coding patterns.
Understands the technology stack and frameworks in use across projects at Ascent.
Proficient in Microsoft Azure - certified Azure Cloud Architect or equivalent.
Proficient in using GIT source control.
Proficient in setting up CI/CD pipelines.
Confident in designing systems that span multiple technologies/platforms.
Proficient knowledge of engineering design patterns.
Experience in high-scale solutions that take advantage of the cloud platform to achieve scalability.
Understand the bigger picture and keep the end goal in sight when eliciting requirements.

Soft skills

A responsible attitude - Needed to take responsibility for the tasks assigned and deliver them to an agreed level of quality and speed
Ability to prioritise work - In the face of potentially conflicting priorities coming from the development and project requirements.
Problem solving skills - Needed to find innovative solutions to team requirements.
Active listening - Giving full attention to what other people are saying, taking time to understand the points being made, asking questions as appropriate, and not interrupting at inappropriate times.
Speaking - Talking to others to convey information effectively.
A ‘can-do’ attitude - Taking ownership of challenges and provide effective solutions.
Attention to detail - Ability to achieve thoroughness and accuracy when accomplishing a task.
Creative thinking - Thinking “outside the box” and come up with innovative solutions.
Critical thinking - Using logic and reasoning to identify the strengths and weaknesses of alternative solutions, conclusions or approaches to problems.
Decision-making abilities - Must be able to take decisions quickly and effectively to ensure a constant flow of work across the team.
Empathy - Understand client situations in order to address root cause of issues. As part of the job they might need to deal with and understand difficult callers.
Able to build client relationship - Build trustworthy relationship with clients by ensuring a healthy balance between professionalism and friendliness.
Self-starter - Ability to work in a fast-paced environment with minimal supervision
Instructing - Teaching others how to do something.
Mentoring - taking personal care to upgrade the technical capabilities of the development team.
Negotiation - Bringing others together and trying to reconcile differences.
Persuasion - Persuading others to change their minds or behaviour.
Time Management - Managing one's own time effectively
Accountability - Take ownership and follow up with the client to ensure issues are resolved.
Organisation - working in an orderly fashion and producing work that is clear and understandable to the end-user.
Tenacity to resolve issues - resolves issues by using knowledge and experience.
Coordination - Adjusting actions in relation to others' actions.
Friendly and outgoing - needed to establish a good working relationship with colleagues in the same team and project teams
Teamwork - Must work well within a team and within established boundaries

Working at Ascent

We chose hybrid working, where you balance time at the office or with your customers with working at home. You'll earn a competitive salary, with a range of essential benefits like life assurance and wellness benefits and a contribution to your pension. Our offices are places to connect and collaborate with colleagues, with socials and regular get-togethers. We take your development and growth seriously, with plenty of opportunities to acquire skills and get certified.

Ascent is an equal opportunities employer. We take intentional steps to ensure inclusion and belonging are something real here, not just something we talk about. No person will be treated less favorably because of their gender, pregnancy, and maternity status, marital or civil partnership status, sexual orientation, race, nationality, ethnic origin, age, religion or belief, or disability status. If you require any reasonable accommodation, please let us know when you apply.

Find out more