We’re First Central Insurance & Technology Group (First Central for short), an innovative, market-leading insurance company. We protect the things customers love so they can get on with what matters to them in life.
Data drives us. It fuels our outstanding distribution, finance, technology and legal services. Our underwriting skills are built on data expertise; it creates the insights we need to give the right cover to the right customers at the right price. But, it’s the people inside and outside our business that power us. They make us stand out, help us succeed. We’re ambitious. We’re growing. We’ve won awards.
At First Central, data is integral to everything we do. Ensuring that our colleagues can easily access data at the time they need it, using the right tool is critical to our daily operational and analytics needs.
We’re looking for a Business Intelligence Platform and Operations Analyst to assist in managing and maintaining our business intelligence platforms who’ll be responsible for running and supporting operational BI and reporting processes that execute on those platforms.
As the Business Intelligence Platform and Operations Analyst, you’ll oversee the administration of SAS, Power BI, and ThoughtSpot environments within First Central and will support the team to ensure that these platforms and content are consistently available to the business, meeting all agreed SLAs.
It's essential that you possess a robust technical background in SAS or Power BI platform administration, as you'll play a pivotal role ensuring our platforms are safe, secure, and highly performant.
Ideally, you'll live a within a commutable distance from our offices in either Salford Quays, Manchester, Haywards Heath, West Sussex or Guernsey but don’t worry if you don’t - we're open to remote workers! We’re big on flexible working, so you'll spend most of your time working from home with a visit to the office when required, but of course, it’s your choice - if you prefer to be in the office more - that's good with us too.
Core skills we’re looking for to succeed in the role:
- SAS Platform Management: Its essential that you possess in-depth expertise in SAS Platform Management and can evidence your strengths.
- SAS and Power BI Technical skills: You’ll need to showcase your proven experience of using SAS and Power BI.
- Stakeholder Management: You’ll need strong stakeholders management experience and will enjoy proactively keeping stakeholders informed on multiple requests amidst rapidly changing priorities.
Making it happen. Together
What’s involved:
- You’ll be responsible for BI platform administration, including following and contributing to the design of processes for security, content, capacity, release and performance management on the environments.
- You’ll be responsible for executing controls on the BI Platforms to ensure data accuracy, consistency, and reliability of timely and accurate information in reports for management decision-making purposes.
- You’ll provide business wide BI content (Reports, Dashboards, Datasets) on a daily basis, including the timely resolution of issues, communicating effectively with teammates, and supporting root cause analysis.
- You’ll contribute ideas for BI platform best practice and how to optimise and make best use of those platforms.
- You’ll execute appropriate governance for federated BI Self-Service across the organisation, promoting innovation within platform guardrails.
- You’ll proactively monitor the health and performance of BI Platforms by carrying out monitoring activities and be relentless in improving system performance by identifying opportunities to tune the environments for optimal performance and platform stability.
- Alongside Technology Operations you’ll execute the installation of software and components, apply patches and updates, and manage upgrades, backups and configuration.
- You’ll develop and maintain documentation and user guides relating to configurations, procedures, policies, admin manuals and industry best practices.
- You’ll ensure compliance with company and other relevant standards / regulations at all times (e.g. Data Security and Data Governance frameworks).
- You’ll communicate with stakeholders to understand and meet their BI-related needs and collaborate with other IT teams to integrate BI tools with other systems and platforms.
Experience & knowledge
- Hands-on platform administration experience in SAS and Power BI platforms, in on premise and cloud environments.
- Experience of delivering operational reporting and BI services.
- Experience of tuning, optimising and automating BI and Reporting processes.
- Experience of using agile and DevOps working practices in a business intelligence environment.
- Problem solving and Incident Management – Experience troubleshooting and fixing issues in existing reports, conducting the root cause analysis and implementing preventative measures to avoid future instances.
- Stakeholder management – Experience managing stakeholders of various levels, proactively keeping them updated on multiple requests with a fast-moving set of changing priorities.
- Keen and active interest in the use of data in the wider industry, with practical knowledge and networks.
Skills
- Excellent PowerBI and SAS skills (SQL & ThoughtSpot advantageous).
- A creative problem solver who can deal with many different priorities at any one time.
- Able to follow, and make recommendations to improve, standards and designs, ensuring their work is of high quality.
- Very good time management and organisation skills with the ability to prioritise multiple demands.
- Supporting and enthusiastic team player focussed on delivering shared outcomes.
- Resilient and comfortable prioritising in demanding situations.
- Highly trustworthy and able to operate with integrity and discretion at all times.
- Energetic and proactive, and someone who motivates others by their “can do, will do” attitude.
- Attention to detail.
Ready to make a positive impact? Apply now and be part of something big!
What can we do for you?
People first. Always. We’re passionate about our colleagues and know the best people deserve an extraordinary working environment. We owe it to them so that’s what we offer. Our workplaces are energetic, inspirational, supportive. To get a taste of the advantages you’ll enjoy, take a look at all our perks in full here.
Intrigued? Our Talent team can tell you everything you need to know about what we want and what we’re offering, so feel free to get in touch.
