Position Title: Lead Business Analyst
Work Location: Manhattan Beach, CA
Type of Employment: Full time
Role Overview:
We are seeking a commercially sharp and analytically sophisticated Lead Business Analyst to join our Retail & Supply Chain function. This is a senior individual contributor role not a people management position focused on providing authoritative business analysis across complex retail, distribution centre (DC), and supply chain programmes, with a growing specialism in AI, data, and analytics.
You will be the most senior analytical voice in the room: shaping how business problems are framed, how data and insight should inform decisions, and how future-state operating models should be structured. You will bring broad retail BA experience across the full value chain stores, merchandising, supply chain, and DC and apply that breadth to programmes where AI, analytics, and data are increasingly central to the solution.
You are a trusted advisor to business leaders, not a delivery manager. Your role is to understand, analyse, challenge, and define ensuring that decisions made in complex transformation programmes are grounded in rigorous business analysis and a clear understanding of operational reality.
Essential
- 10+ years of Business Analysis experience, with significant time in retail, supply chain, or DC/logistics environments.
- Senior individual contributor with a track record of owning analysis on large, complex, multi-stakeholder programmes not necessarily managing BA teams.
- Deep working knowledge of DC operations and supply chain processes inbound, outbound, inventory, returns, fulfilment, and network logistics.
- Strong experience in AI, analytics, or data-focused programmes defining requirements for ML models, analytics platforms, data products, or data governance initiatives.
- Proven ability to conduct data analysis and translate findings into business insight comfortable working with datasets, dashboards, and BI tools to support analysis.
- Experience across the broader retail value chain: stores, merchandising, supply chain, ERP, and/or digital/omnichannel not limited to a single domain.
- Demonstrated ability to develop business cases, TOMs, process architectures, and data flow models at programme level.
- Excellent stakeholder engagement skills comfortable advising at Director and C-suite level with authority and commercial credibility.
Desirable
- Hands-on experience defining requirements for AI/ML use cases in retail or supply chain forecasting, optimisation, automation, or pricing.
- Exposure to data platform programmes: data warehouses, data lakes, lakehouse architecture, or MDM initiatives.
- Experience with DC automation goods-to-person, ASRS, automated sortation from a process and data analysis perspective.
- Familiarity with ERP platforms in a retail or supply chain context (SAP, Oracle, Dynamics 365) without expectation of configuration ownership.
- Knowledge of integration and data exchange patterns APIs, EDI, event streaming sufficient to analyse data flow and identify gaps.
- Experience with SQL, Power BI, Tableau, or similar tools for self-serve data analysis.
- Relevant certifications: CBAP, CCBA, PMI-PBA, or postgraduate qualification in Business, Data, or Supply Chain.
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