Business Analyst

We are looking for a proactive and technically minded Business Analyst to act as the bridge between stakeholders and Engineering. This role is responsible for gathering, analysing, and documenting requirements; supporting delivery and ensuring product features are clearly defined, prioritised, and successfully delivered.

The successful candidate will develop a strong understanding of the Optix product suite, software architecture, and customer journeys in order to translate business needs into actionable development requirements. They will work closely with Product Owner, Product Manager, Engineering teams, and stakeholders across the business to support the successful delivery of high-quality software solutions.

Hours of work: Flexitime available, core hours of 10am – 3pm Monday – Friday must be worked, and you must work 37.5 hours per week.

Key Responsibilities:

Product & Technical Understanding

• Develop a comprehensive understanding of Optix products, software solutions, features, and underlying architecture.
• Build sufficient technical and functional knowledge to communicate effectively between engineering and the wider business.
• Maintain awareness of development processes, system dependencies, and product capabilities.

Requirements Gathering & Analysis

• Organise and facilitate requirement gathering workshops and discovery sessions with both internal and external stakeholders.
• Gather, analyse, and document customer and business requirements.
• Translate requirements into detailed user stories, customer flows, and acceptance criteria.
• Maintain and update acceptance criteria and supporting documentation within the project repository.
• Conduct data analysis and information gathering to support feature definition and decision making.

Agile Delivery Support

• Work closely with the Product Owner and Product Manager to support roadmap delivery and feature prioritisation.
• Participate actively in Scrum ceremonies including sprint planning, backlog refinement, daily stand-ups, reviews, and retrospectives.
• Assist Engineering in breaking down complex features into manageable deliverables.
• Provide ongoing clarification and support to engineering teams throughout the sprint lifecycle.
• Act as the primary point of contact for engineering teams regarding feature requirements and business logic.

Stakeholder Management & Communication

• Serve as the liaison between stakeholders and technical teams, ensuring alignment on priorities, timelines, and expectations.
• Facilitate effective communication across teams.
• Organise and host product demonstrations, show-and-tell sessions, and stakeholder reviews.
• Escalate delivery risks, blockers, or requirement concerns to management where appropriate.

Quality Assurance & UAT

• Create and coordinate User Acceptance Testing (UAT) plans and support UAT execution.
• Ensure acceptance criteria are clearly defined and testable.
• Support validation activities to ensure delivered features meet business requirements.

Risk & Issue Management

• Proactively identify dependencies, blockers, and delivery risks.
• Work collaboratively with stakeholders and delivery teams to resolve issues quickly and effectively.
• Escalate key risks and issues to leadership when required.

Key Skills and Experience:

• Proven experience as a Business Analyst within Agile delivery environments, particularly Scrum teams.
• Strong technical acumen with the ability to understand software architecture, APIs, system integrations, and development processes.
• Experience working with workflow and backlog management tools such as Azure DevOps, TFS, Jira, or similar platforms.
• Strong experience writing detailed user stories, acceptance criteria, use cases, and process/customer flows.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Strong stakeholder management and facilitation skills.
• Experience working across multiple cross-functional teams.
• Analytical mindset with experience using data to support decision making and feature definition.
• Ability to adapt quickly in fast-paced environments with changing priorities.
• Collaborative and solution-focused approach to problem solving.
• Commitment to continuous improvement and delivery quality.

Desirable Skills and Experience:

• Experience working within SaaS or software product environments.
• Experience supporting UAT processes and release activities.
• Familiarity with customer journey mapping and process modelling.
• Understanding of Agile product delivery and software development lifecycles.

In return, we will provide:

• Hybrid working with offices available in York if you want to come in. You need to work from the office two days per week
• Learning and development opportunities
• A positive, collaborative working environment
• Quarterly socials
• Holidays starting at 25 days, increasing up to 30 days, 1 day for each year of service
• Vitality Health
• Life Assurance Policy
• Pension scheme (4% employer contribution)
• Modern working facilities
• Pool/ Table Tennis available in the office
• On-site parking
• Pizza Thursdays on the last Thursday of the month
• Cycle to Work Scheme

About Optix:

Optix is the leading provider of business management software for Opticians in the UK. Our goal is to fulfil all our customer’s technology needs and deliver great software that enables opticians to run profitable businesses and provide excellent clinical care.

This includes the management of clinical processes, sensitive patient data, and integrating with complex medical equipment: alongside delivering comprehensive marketing, stock management, business intelligence, and financial management features.

We are trusted by hundreds of Opticians across the country, from small independent practices to large multi-nationals. Our success has been built on word-of-mouth from our extremely satisfied client base: we employ no salespeople and focus solely on developing quality products that sell themselves.

We work in a collaborative team where everyone’s input is welcomed and encouraged. As a member of our development team, you will also be expected to contribute towards the improvement of our organisation by proactively driving improvements in architecture, design, process, tooling, and strategy.

We value and encourage continual personal development within our teams and love learning new tech and are always on the lookout for better ways of doing things. We also provide training opportunities to help you improve your skills.

Interview Process:

1. A video or face-to-face interview (preferred) which will be a mix of competency and technical questioning

2. Depending on the role a technical test may be issued

Diversity Statement:

Optix Software Ltd is committed to equal opportunities in all aspects of our work. We are committed to treating all colleagues equally regardless of race, gender, disability, age, sexual orientation, religion, or belief. We are committed to equal opportunities in all aspects of our work.