Functional Business Analyst Payments Modernization (Charlotte, New York, New Jersey)

Functional Business Analyst Payments Modernization
Location: Charlotte, New York, New Jersey
Duration: 9-12Month

JD:

Key Responsibilities

Payments Domain & Functional Ownership

• Act as a functional SME for payment rails and payment operations, supporting modernization initiatives across legacy and nextgen platforms.
• Own and define end-to-end payment flows including initiation, validation, enrichment, routing, clearing, settlement, reconciliation, and exception handling.
• Partner with business stakeholders, operations teams, and compliance to translate regulatory, risk, and operational needs into detailed functional requirements.

Product Ownership / Delivery Leadership

• Serve as a Product Owner or Senior BA within an Agile / SAFe delivery model.
• Define and prioritize the product backlog, user stories, features, and acceptance criteria aligned to payments transformation objectives.
• Support PI planning, sprint planning, backlog grooming, UAT coordination, and release readiness.

Payments Rail Modernization Focus

• Support modernization of one or more payment rails, such as:
  • ACH (NACHA)
  • Wires (Fedwire, CHIPS)
  • RTP / FedNow
  • Cross-border payments and correspondent banking
• Contribute to initiatives such as ISO 20022 migration, real-time payments enablement, straight-through processing (STP), and operational resiliency.

Stakeholder & Operations Engagement

• Collaborate closely with payments operations, investigations, Treasury, Risk, Compliance, and Technology teams.
• Document and optimize as-is and to-be process flows, highlighting operational impacts, controls, and handoffs.
• Support change management, operational readiness, and postimplementation stabilization.

Required Qualifications

Payments & Banking Experience

• 6 8 years of experience as a Business Analyst, Functional Analyst, or Product Owner in the banking payments domain.
• Strong hands-on understanding of payments processing and payments operations in a US banking environment.
• Experience working on large transformation or modernization programs within Tier1 or large regional banks.

Functional & Technical Acumen

• Ability to articulate functional requirements for complex payment scenarios, including:
  • Posting & balances
  • Liquidity and prefunding
  • Cut-off times and calendars
  • Returns, recalls, reversals, and investigations
• Familiarity with payment message formats (e.g., ISO 20022, XML) and payment orchestration concepts is strongly preferred.

Agile & Delivery Skills

• Experience working in Agile / Scrum or SAFe environments.
• Hands-on experience writing epics, features, user stories, and acceptance criteria.
• Comfortable working with distributed technology teams and multiple vendor platforms.

Preferred / Nice-to-Have

• Direct experience with RTP, FedNow, or ISO 20022 migration programs.
• Exposure to modern payment hubs, orchestration layers, or vendor platforms (e.g., FIS, Fiserv, ACI, Volante, Finastra).
• Experience supporting regulatory-driven initiatives (e.g., operational resilience, risk controls, audit readiness).
• Prior consulting experience within large banking transformation programs.