Business Systems Analyst – Data/ELT

Contract Role: Business Analyst / QA – Databricks Migration Project
Contract Length: 6 months
Location: Toronto (Hybrid)
Engagement Type: Contract
Project: SQL Server to Azure Databricks Migration
Role Overview
We are seeking a Business Analyst / QA (combined role) to support a largescale enterprise data platform migration to Azure Databricks. This role will work closely with internal Data Management stakeholders, business SMEs, and a vendor delivery team to ensure clear requirements, strong data validation, and high-quality delivery across all phases of the project.?scale ?quality delivery
The BA/QA will play a critical role in requirements definition, data quality validation, functional testing, and acceptance support, particularly during ETL development, historical data migration, and parallel run activities.
Key Responsibilities
Business Analysis

• Elicit, analyze, and document functional and non?functional requirements (FRs/NFRs) for data pipelines, reporting, and downstream consumption use cases.
• Produce and maintain Business Requirements Documentation (BRD) and supporting artefacts aligned with the project plan.
• Define and document data validation rules, reconciliation logic, and acceptance criteria in collaboration with business and technical stakeholders.
• Act as the primary liaison between business users, internal IT teams, and the vendor delivery team to clarify scope, assumptions, and dependencies.
• Support toll?gate and go/no?go decision points by ensuring requirements and acceptance criteria are clearly met.

Quality Assurance & Testing

• Develop and execute test plans, test cases, and test scenarios covering:
  • Data ingestion and transformation (ETL pipelines)
  • Historical data loads
  • Schema migration and data mappings
  • Parallel run validation (legacy vs Databricks outputs)
• Perform data validation and reconciliation between source systems and Databricks outputs, identifying defects, root causes, and trends.
• Log, track, and triage defects; work closely with vendor and internal teams to drive resolution.
• Validate that delivered solutions meet business requirements, data quality expectations, and acceptance criteria prior to sign?off.
• Support user acceptance testing (UAT) and final delivery acceptance.

Delivery & Governance Support

• Participate in sprint ceremonies, design reviews, and status checkpoints.
• Contribute to project documentation, including validation results, testing summaries, and acceptance sign?off materials.
• Support auditability and governance objectives by ensuring traceability between requirements, test cases, and delivered solutions.

Required Skills & Experience

• 10+ years of experience in a Business Analyst, QA Analyst, or combined BA/QA role, with a strong focus on capital markets data and trade processing systems.
• Demonstrated experience supporting the equity trade lifecycle, including:
  • Order capture, routing, execution, allocation, confirmation, clearing, and settlement
  • Understanding of pre?trade, trade?date, and post?trade processing flows
• Strong knowledge of equity order and trade types, including but not limited to:
  • Market, limit, stop, and conditional orders
  • Single?leg vs multi?leg orders
  • Block trades, partial fills, and amendments/cancellations
• Hands?on experience working with FIX and FIXML specifications, including:
  • Interpretation of FIX/FIXML messages for orders, executions, allocations, and trade events
  • Understanding of key tags, message types, and lifecycle sequencing
  • Ability to validate data completeness and correctness across FIX/FIXML?driven workflows
• Deep understanding of data relationships and hierarchies across the equity trade lifecycle, such as:
  • Order ? execution ? allocation ? trade relationships
  • Parent/child order structures
  • One-to?many and many?many and many to?to?many trade mappings
• Strong experience with data?centric testing and validation, including:
  • Data reconciliation between source systems and downstream platforms
  • Validation of derived fields, aggregations, and lifecycle status transitions
  • Identification of data quality issues related to timing, sequencing, and state changes
• Proficiency in SQL or equivalent query languages to analyze and validate large volumes of trade and order data.
• Experience supporting data warehouse, data lake, or lakehouse environments, ideally in cloud platforms such as Azure Databricks.
• Solid understanding of ETL / ELT pipelines, historical data migration, and parallel run validation.
• Experience working in Agile or hybrid delivery models, including sprint ceremonies, backlog refinement, and release validation.
• Strong stakeholder management skills, with the ability to bridge business users, technology teams, and external vendors.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to document clear, testable requirements and acceptance criteria in complex data environments.