Product Business Anaylst, Marketing and Engagement

KU Endowment•Lawrence, KS

2d•$76,900•Hybrid

About The Position

As KU Endowment continues to stabilize and optimize its advancement technology ecosystem, the Product Business Analyst – Marketing and Engagement position plays a critical role in translating advancement engagement priorities into clearly defined, actionable system development requirements across KU Endowment’s outreach platforms. An effective Business Analyst ensures stabilization and roadmap initiatives are rapidly scoped, prioritized, and documented so the product and engineering teams can deliver solutions that improve fundraising operations. This role will focus on engagement platforms like Salesforce Marketing Cloud and additional messaging tools that power donor and alumni outreach. The position also plays an important role in supporting scalable audience operations and engagement architecture across enterprise outreach systems. A successful Business Analyst will partner closely with advancement stakeholders to translate operational challenges into clearly defined user stories and acceptance criteria, to populate a backlog that enables faster delivery and reduced rework. The preferred Business Analyst candidate should bring advancement domain knowledge into daily collaboration with IS and the product team, ensuring roadmap initiatives are shaped by engagement best practices and aligned with the evolving strategic plan at KU Endowment. Reporting to the Manager, DevOps – Marketing Cloud/Engagement, this role ensures roadmap initiatives supporting alumni and donor communications, segmentation, and campaign operations are well-scoped and aligned with fundraising and engagement goals. This position partners closely with BrandComm, Donor Engagement, and other advancement services teams to translate outreach needs into scalable platform capabilities. The individual in this position is expected to embrace KU Endowment’s stated core values – collaboration, curiosity, empowerment, and excellence – and demonstrate support for them through professional interactions and activities.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Business, Information Systems, Project Management, or related field (or equivalent professional experience).
3+ years of business analysis experience supporting product, program or technology teams — preferably in fundraising, CRM, or higher education.
Demonstrated experience eliciting requirements and writing user stories and acceptance criteria.
Strong proficiency with documentation tools (e.g., Word, SnagIt, Microsoft Office Suite).
Excellent analytical and communication skills, including presenting technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.

Nice To Haves

Working knowledge of agile methodologies (Scrum, Kanban).
Prior experience in nonprofit advancement, or within a complex development ecosystem.
Experience working with marketing automation or engagement platforms such as Salesforce Marketing Cloud, HubSpot, Marketo or similar tools.
Familiarity with audience segmentation, campaign workflows, and marketing audience data structures.
Experience using Jira or similar product management tools to document requirements, manage backlogs, and support agile development workflows.
Capable of interpreting complex business processes and translating them into clear functional requirements and acceptance criteria.
Understands engagement platform concepts such as audience segmentation, journey orchestration, campaign automation, and message personalization.
Skilled at asking probing questions that clarify the “why” behind needs and uncovering assumptions.
Effective in leading discussions with business users and technical partners.
Communicates complex ideas clearly in both written and verbal formats to diverse audiences.
Understands agile principles and the flow of user stories, sprint planning, and backlog refinement.
Works collaboratively with the Product Owner to surface, prioritize, and detail user stories.
Sees patterns, identifies root causes, and proposes solutions that balance stakeholder needs with technical feasibility.
Thrives in iterative environments where requirements evolve with feedback and learning.
Ability to establish and maintain professional and effective working relationships inside and outside KU Endowment.
Ability to adapt to new procedures and technology.

Responsibilities

Collaborate with advancement stakeholders across the university ecosystem to gather and document requirements related to donor and alumni communications, audience segmentation, engagement journeys, and outreach operations.
Support the campaign and journey development lifecycle by translating outreach plans into documented requirements, audience logic, and system workflows.
Support audience data design, segmentation strategy, and campaign workflow development within enterprise engagement systems.
Work closely with the product and engineering teams to translate requirements into prioritized backlog items, ensuring roadmap initiatives are well-defined and aligned with strategic advancement objectives.
Translate business needs into functional specifications and wireframes that communicate clear expectations to technical and non-technical team members.
Conduct process analysis and workflow mapping to identify opportunities for system improvements, automation, or standardization across advancement operations.
Support system testing and validation, including execution of user acceptance testing (UAT), and documentation of results to ensure solutions meet defined acceptance criteria.
Collaborate with cross-functional teams (e.g., CRM, advancement services, analytics, and marketing operations) to ensure engagement platforms integrate effectively with ecosystem platforms.
Provide tools and documentation to assist in training and onboarding efforts for new system features, reports, or tools.
Monitor performance of deployed solutions and recommend iterative improvements based on feedback, performance metrics, and evolving business needs.
Regular and reliable attendance is essential for this position.
Performs other duties as assigned.