Business Analyst
| Posting date: | 17 September 2025 |
|---|---|
| Salary: | £45,894 to £54,952 per year |
| Hours: | Full time |
| Closing date: | 01 October 2025 |
| Location: | EH11 3XD |
| Remote working: | Hybrid - work remotely up to 2 days per week |
| Company: | Scottish Government |
| Job type: | Temporary |
| Job reference: | 2196 |
Summary
Are you ready to play a key role in transforming how student support is delivered across Scotland?
This fixed-term role (12 months) sits within the Finance Team at the Student Awards Agency Scotland (SAAS) and supports the successful transfer of Further Education Student Support (FESS) functions from the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) to SAAS, as part of the Post-School Education and Skills Reform Programme. The Finance Team plays a vital role in ensuring that public funds are managed effectively to deliver support to Scotland’s learners.
As a Business Analyst, you will work at the heart of this transfer project, collaborating with colleagues across SAAS, including Policy, HR, and Communications, as well as with Scottish Government Reform teams and the Scottish Funding Council. Your main focus will be to design, develop, and embed the processes needed to administer FESS within SAAS. This is a high-impact role offering the chance to shape how support is delivered to students across Scotland.
You will be responsible for line managing a Finance Officer who will support transactional data work. A key objective of the role is to assess and adapt existing processes from the Scottish Funding Council, and to develop new management information systems to support ongoing decision-making. With no current system holding historic data on this expenditure, your work will be instrumental in building a strong data foundation for the future.
Responsibilities
Be responsible for process modelling, using a range of tools and techniques to map business processes (e.g. ‘As-Is’ and ‘To-Be’, gap analysis), that meet the required audit and governance standards for correct stewardship of these funds.
Identify risks, issues, dependencies and assumptions and escalate/manage these in line with project processes.
Undertake impact analysis of the potential consequences of proposed changes and new ways of working and estimate the scope of change to accomplish relevant objectives within the project design identifying relevant potential stakeholders.
Engage stakeholders at all levels by facilitating workshops and presenting on requirements gathering and solution development.
Lead on the FESS and Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA) budget and approval process.
Shadow current FESS and EMA processes operating within SFC for a end of academic year returns and in year redistribution currently operated within SFC and audit returns and guidance.
Create and maintain management information on the current and historic FESS and EMA to inform future year allocations and reporting.
Design payment processes in Oracle Fusion for FESS and EMA to ensure that payments are made in a timely manner in line with SG purchase to pay best practices.
Success profile
Success profiles are specific to each job and they include the mix of skills, experience and behaviours candidates will be assessed on.
Technical / Professional Skills:
Requirement management (the process of capturing stakeholder needs, assessing, defining and justifying those needs to arrive at an agreed schedule of requirements) - Practitioner Level*
Solutions development (the ability to identify, document and analyse the various delivery options and select the optimal solution) - Practitioner Level*.
*Practitioner Level - The position holder knows what needs to be done to deliver programmes/projects and has experience of doing it successfully. They can be expected to work with experts in the field and policy teams to implement and maintain PPM processes, artefacts and able to report and present on the programme/project delivery.
Experience
Demonstrable experience of gathering and analysing user and business needs in a project delivery environment to support the achievement of outcomes in a business analysis role.
Experience of facilitation and stakeholder engagement to collaborate towards the design, build/development and delivery of the project’s user needs.
Behaviours:
Seeing the big picture – Level 4.
Working together - Level 4.
This fixed-term role (12 months) sits within the Finance Team at the Student Awards Agency Scotland (SAAS) and supports the successful transfer of Further Education Student Support (FESS) functions from the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) to SAAS, as part of the Post-School Education and Skills Reform Programme. The Finance Team plays a vital role in ensuring that public funds are managed effectively to deliver support to Scotland’s learners.
As a Business Analyst, you will work at the heart of this transfer project, collaborating with colleagues across SAAS, including Policy, HR, and Communications, as well as with Scottish Government Reform teams and the Scottish Funding Council. Your main focus will be to design, develop, and embed the processes needed to administer FESS within SAAS. This is a high-impact role offering the chance to shape how support is delivered to students across Scotland.
You will be responsible for line managing a Finance Officer who will support transactional data work. A key objective of the role is to assess and adapt existing processes from the Scottish Funding Council, and to develop new management information systems to support ongoing decision-making. With no current system holding historic data on this expenditure, your work will be instrumental in building a strong data foundation for the future.
Responsibilities
Be responsible for process modelling, using a range of tools and techniques to map business processes (e.g. ‘As-Is’ and ‘To-Be’, gap analysis), that meet the required audit and governance standards for correct stewardship of these funds.
Identify risks, issues, dependencies and assumptions and escalate/manage these in line with project processes.
Undertake impact analysis of the potential consequences of proposed changes and new ways of working and estimate the scope of change to accomplish relevant objectives within the project design identifying relevant potential stakeholders.
Engage stakeholders at all levels by facilitating workshops and presenting on requirements gathering and solution development.
Lead on the FESS and Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA) budget and approval process.
Shadow current FESS and EMA processes operating within SFC for a end of academic year returns and in year redistribution currently operated within SFC and audit returns and guidance.
Create and maintain management information on the current and historic FESS and EMA to inform future year allocations and reporting.
Design payment processes in Oracle Fusion for FESS and EMA to ensure that payments are made in a timely manner in line with SG purchase to pay best practices.
Success profile
Success profiles are specific to each job and they include the mix of skills, experience and behaviours candidates will be assessed on.
Technical / Professional Skills:
Requirement management (the process of capturing stakeholder needs, assessing, defining and justifying those needs to arrive at an agreed schedule of requirements) - Practitioner Level*
Solutions development (the ability to identify, document and analyse the various delivery options and select the optimal solution) - Practitioner Level*.
*Practitioner Level - The position holder knows what needs to be done to deliver programmes/projects and has experience of doing it successfully. They can be expected to work with experts in the field and policy teams to implement and maintain PPM processes, artefacts and able to report and present on the programme/project delivery.
Experience
Demonstrable experience of gathering and analysing user and business needs in a project delivery environment to support the achievement of outcomes in a business analysis role.
Experience of facilitation and stakeholder engagement to collaborate towards the design, build/development and delivery of the project’s user needs.
Behaviours:
Seeing the big picture – Level 4.
Working together - Level 4.