Business Analyst (Data Analyst) - Enterprise Datalakes Implementation Project

Pennant Solutions Group is hiring a Contract Business Analyst / Data Analyst to help deliver an enterprise Data Lake implementation on Microsoft Azure in a hybrid role based in Richmond, VA . This initiative focuses on bridging business needs with cloud data engineering architecture, so you can influence how data is governed, validated, and ultimately used across the organization.

What you’ll do

• Lead discovery sessions, workshops, and structured interviews with cross-functional enterprise stakeholders to capture data demands , consumption patterns , and analytical needs .
• Translate high-level, ambiguous requirements into Agile-ready epics, user stories , and acceptance criteria for delivery teams building a modern data platform.
• Create end-to-end functional and business documentation , including FRDs, BRDs, and technical design specifications.
• Produce granular source-to-target mapping (STTM) matrices covering ingestion frequency, transformation rules, filtering criteria, and business logic.
• Run deep-dive data profiling across RDBMS, NoSQL, JSON/XML, and flat files to uncover anomalies, schema drift, nullability patterns, and cardinality issues.
• Write complex SQL queries, analytical functions, and stored procedures to validate historical trends and edge cases across multi-terabyte stores.
• Partner with Data Architects to support multidimensional schemas (Star, Snowflake) and logical/physical models for Azure Gold and Consumption layers.
• Define and document enterprise KPIs , metrics, and attributes to enable a consistent business semantic layer.
• Collaborate with Data Engineers working with Azure Data Factory (ADF) , Azure Databricks , and Azure Synapse to ensure ingestion pipelines match documented business rules.
• Help define partitioning strategies, choose file formats such as Parquet and Delta Lake , and evaluate lifecycle policies to balance performance and cost.
• Support metadata management and data cataloging with Microsoft Purview , ensuring lineage remains continuously tracked.
• Design data quality metrics, rules, and thresholds, and coordinate automated profiling and exception handling processes.
• Support compliance with enterprise data privacy and access governance requirements including GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, and SOC2 during ingestion and curation.
• Author and execute validation scripts and acceptance test plans to reconcile source data with target lakehouse layers.
• Coordinate UAT with business users, manage defect logging and triage, and drive backlogs toward resolution.
• Develop training materials (data dictionaries, runbooks) and conduct knowledge-transfer sessions to accelerate adoption of new data assets.

Required qualifications

• 5 to 15 years of experience as a Business Analyst, Data Analyst, or Systems Analyst, including enterprise data warehousing and big data initiatives.
• Direct involvement in at least one full lifecycle Enterprise Data Lake / Lakehouse design, development, or migration.
• Expert-level SQL skills, including complex joins, window functions, recursive queries, and query optimization.
• Proven ability to produce exhaustive STTM documentation that captures transformations, joins, aggregate logic, and metadata.
• Strong knowledge of relational data modeling, Data Vault 2.0 , Kimball dimensional modeling, and Bronze/Silver/Gold (medallion) architecture.
• Familiarity with Power BI (DAX, Power Query) for prototyping and validating pipelines visually.
• Experience delivering in Agile, Scrum, or SAFe environments using Jira , Azure DevOps , or Confluence .
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Business Analytics, Data Management, or a related field.

Project scope and key objectives

• Migration of legacy operational databases, ERPs, CRM systems, and external feeds into a centralized Azure Data Lake architecture.
• Decommissioning of siloed legacy data marts while transitioning workloads to ADLS Gen2 .
• Standardizing Bronze (Raw) , Silver (Curated/Cleansed) , and Gold (Business Aggregates) layers for BI and advanced analytics.
• Enforcing governance, lineage tracking, and data quality frameworks across transactional and analytical pipelines.
• Supporting self-service analytics models with optimized Azure Synapse and Power BI assets to help accelerate data democratization.

Helpful add-ons (preferred)

• Microsoft certifications: DP-900 and DP-203
• Microsoft certification: PL-300
• CBAP or PMI-PBA
• Scripting knowledge (Python, PySpark, or R) for exploration and validation
• Change management and data governance experience in regulated industries (Finance, Healthcare, Insurance, or Retail)

Why this initiative

This project is a critical strategic investment in modern data architecture. You’ll be positioned at the center of a high-visibility, mission-critical transformation where your work shapes how the enterprise governs, surfaces, and consumes analytical data for years. Pennant Solutions Group also provides a competitive rate structure , exposure to top-tier enterprise cloud architectures, and a collaborative team of experienced data practitioners.