Senior Business Analyst - Contract

About the Company:

Stable Kernel is a technology services firm and custom software developer building scalable software solutions for cutting-edge, innovative enterprises to move their business forward. We are headquartered in Atlanta, GA.

 We’re a privately held, Great Place to Work Certified Company™ with multi-awards for our amazing culture. Plus we have an impressive 10+ year
trajectory of sustainable growth. At Stable Kernel, we support our colleagues in ways that help them do some of the best work of their lives.

 

About the Role:

As a Stable Kernel Senior Systems Analyst, you will join an existing team, including other Analysts, embedded within a major national QSR client's Core Loyalty program. This is not a traditional requirements-gathering role: you will own discovery for loyalty services, lead cross-functional coordination across vendor and engineering teams, manage a live production support channel, and shape how the loyalty platform evolves through re-architecture and new integrations. Your blend of technical knowledge, systems thinking, and communication skills allows you to partner with client product owners and tech leads to define the “why” and “how”
behind complex loyalty initiatives, from build through support. Demonstrated experience building or re-architecting a loyalty program is required for this role. Senior Systems Analysts report directly to the Lead Business Analyst.

You may be classified as individual contributors or as people managers with individual contributor responsibilities.

 

Core Responsibilities Include:

• Technical Impact:
  ○ Leading discovery for loyalty services, including redemption offers,
  promotions, loyalty rewards, and reward template management.
  ○ Mapping current- and future-state architectures across loyalty data models,
  integration points, and dependent services, including identifying data ownership
  ambiguities and re-architecture opportunities.
  ○ Partnering with tech leads and engineering teams to author data contracts
  and negotiate vendor integrations, including asynchronous/batch API patterns,
  idempotency, polling-based status checks, and vendor-specific authentication
  (SSO, API key rotation, IP whitelisting).
• ○ Inheriting and reconciling in-flight technical documentation, picking up active
  vendor integrations mid-stream, and working across multiple document versions
  (e.g. external vs. internal data contracts).
• Business Alignment:
  ○ Understanding the client’s business and loyalty program goals and using
  them to improve the definition for your team’s projects.
  ○ Shaping scope and sequencing for complex initiatives, including defending
  boundaries with client leadership when scope pressure arises.
  ○ Facilitating team conversations to clearly identify gaps, risks, and
  assumptions to accurately estimate work.
  ○ Understanding SK’s service offerings and cross-department capabilities,
  identifying organic growth opportunities, and supporting the statement of work
  process.
• Interacting with Others:
  ○ Serving as a recognized point analyst for core loyalty work alongside your
  fellow analyst, fielding questions from engineering, QA, and client business
  stakeholders.
  ○ Leading structured working sessions with client teams including product
  owners, tech leads, vendor partners, and business operations.
  ○ Communicating risks, trade-offs, and scope implications with clarity while
  coordinating with dependent teams to surface upstream and downstream
  impacts.
• Autonomy and Ambiguity:
  ○ Managing a live production support channel, triaging and resolving issues
  using tools such as Postman and API inspection.
  ○ Creating and maintaining playbooks and troubleshooting guides for client
  support teams to reduce escalation volume and enable self-service resolution.
  ○ Breaking down work for estimation and implementation, building structured
  epics and tickets that allow engineering teams to begin without ramp-up friction.
  ○ Succeeding with ambiguity, including standing up quickly on a program
  already in progress, and leading Discovery sessions that inform product roadmap
  decisions founded in data.
• Problem-Solving:
  ○ Identifying and solving high-priority, complex problems and distilling them into
  short- and long-term solutions quickly and effectively.
  ○ Monitoring solution health across loyalty services and identifying patterns that
  warrant proactive escalation or re-architecture.
  ○ Recognizing and mitigating risk effectively, navigating difficult situations by
  independently finding a way forward or escalating with a possible solution.
• Leadership:
  ○ Driving best practices across your project and client program, contributing
  templates, approaches, and domain insights back to the BA practice.
  ○ Mentoring junior and intermediate colleagues through constructive feedback,
  guidance on complex projects, and team learning sessions
• ○ Demonstrating strong product leadership skills, including planning,
  delegating, making critical decisions, and representing the team in client
  conversations.
• Intimate, Working Familiarity With:
• API testing tools such as Postman, including inspecting calls and diagnosing
  integration issues.
  ● Data transformation pipelines and layered data concepts (e.g., bronze/silver/gold
  environments such as Databricks or similar).
  ● Cloud, network, log, and application performance monitoring tools.
  ● Vendor data contract negotiation and asynchronous/batch API integration patterns
  (idempotency, polling, status endpoints, rate limiting).
  General Requirements:
  ● 8-10 years of experience as an analyst.
  ● Demonstrated, hands-on experience building or significantly re-architecting a customer
  loyalty program is required. You can speak to the data model, the reward lifecycle, and
  the business trade-offs involved.
  ● Experience working in a consulting or professional services organization.
  ● Experience partnering with engineering and data teams to identify, design, and
  implement AI-enabled capabilities such as decisioning, automation, personalization, or
  insight generation within backend systems.
  ● A bachelor’s degree in computer science, information technology, or similar.

A Bit More Info:

Minimum Hourly Rate: $75
This is a contract position.

Stable Kernel operates a People Before Place Hybrid model, allowing most employees to
choose where they can do their best work most days. Travel may be associated with this role as it requires you to maintain an in-office presence in a
hybrid capacity for regular in-person engagements for both clients and internal teams.

Our generous total compensation package includes:

• Company-subsidized health, vision, and dental plan premium options beginning on the first day of employment
• 401k with above-average company matching 
• Fully paid Group Life, Short and Long Term Disability, and AD&D insurance
• Optional Flexible Spending Account and Health Savings Account participation
• Voluntary Life, Critical Illness, and Accident insurance
• EAP and Health Advocacy program available at no cost to employees and their dependents
• $3000+ annual industry educational budget 
• Paid time off and paid holidays Access to Perks at Work program featuring a variety of discounted products and services

Stable Kernel’s culture is inclusive and expansive. We celebrate diversity in its many glorious
forms and do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender role
orientation, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

*Note – We are not sponsoring employment visas at this time. If you are currently in possession of an employment visa, it will need to be effective for at least 3 years from the date of your application for your candidacy for employment to be considered.

 

Stable Kernel’s culture is inclusive and expansive. We celebrate diversity in its many glorious forms and do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender role orientation, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

However, we will discriminate against those unwilling to comply with the practice of our company values:

• we work with integrity always
• we respect our work and each other
• we are dedicated to life-long learning and sharing
• we stay hungry for new challenges

If you are like-minded in this regard, we hope you will apply. We look forward to meeting you.