Application Systems Analyst Lead - Contingent

Public Trust Eligibility Required

This is a contingent position, meaning employment is dependent upon the successful award of the associated contract to Aretum and completion of any required background investigation or security clearance verification. 

About Aretum

Aretum is a mission-driven organization committed to delivering innovative, technology-enabled solutions to our customers across defense, civilian, and homeland security sectors. Our teams work at the intersection of strategy, technology, and transformation, helping agencies solve their most critical challenges. We believe in investing in our people and creating a culture where collaboration, inclusion, and professional growth are at the forefront. 

Job Summary 

Aretum is seeking an Application Systems Analyst Lead for a role supporting a large-scale federal digital content management and systems integration program. In the systems analyst capacity, you will work directly with government business stakeholders, user experience staff, and subject matter experts to define the business rules, metadata mappings, and workflow designs that drive content exchange between major enterprise systems, turning ambiguous business needs into clear, buildable user stories for a small Agile development team. In the lead capacity, you will run the delivery engine of the engagement, facilitating Agile ceremonies, tracking sprint performance against committed story points, reporting progress and risks to government stakeholders, and keeping a sprint-based contract on schedule through closeout. This position suits a senior analyst who is equally comfortable in a metadata crosswalk spreadsheet and a program status briefing.

Due to the nature of our work as a federal consulting organization, employees may be expected to handle Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) and must adhere to applicable safeguarding and compliance requirements.  

Responsibilities

• Elicit, analyze, and document content eligibility criteria and business rules for content selection, such as date ranges, status flags, and ownership boundaries, including inclusion and exclusion criteria, filtering logic, and selection triggers, in collaboration with government business and user experience staff.
• Inventory source and target metadata fields and develop field mapping, transformation, and normalization rules, addressing required, optional, derived, and system-generated metadata across integrated systems.
• Define metadata quality, completeness, and schema compliance validation rules, and create reconciliation procedures for metadata mismatches and validation failures, including exception queues and remediation paths.
• Document workflow states, approvals, escalations, and exception paths, along with user roles, permissions, and administrative responsibilities for workflow administration and governance functions.
• Document exception handling for excluded, duplicate, or incomplete content, and define audit and traceability requirements for content selection and transfer decisions.
• Translate analysis into well-formed JIRA user stories with clear acceptance criteria, and support backlog grooming, story scoring, and sprint planning with the development team and government product stakeholders.
• Collaborate with government QA and testing staff on acceptance and testing criteria, and support user acceptance testing, validation activities, and operational readiness reviews.
• Provide analytical input into lifecycle documentation maintained by the client, including system requirements documents, design documents, workflow diagrams, and security assessment and authorization inputs.
• Facilitate Agile ceremonies, including daily stand-ups, user story creation sessions, backlog grooming, sprint planning, sprint reviews, and retrospectives, for a scrum team on a three-week sprint cadence.
• Track and report sprint performance, including planned versus actual story point completion, velocity trends, and quality metrics, using JIRA dashboards and program reporting tools.
• Prepare and deliver clear written and verbal status reports to government stakeholders covering progress, risks, dependencies, and issues, and maintain risk and dependency logs throughout the engagement.
• Coordinate cross-team dependencies with government project managers, developers, testers, and subject matter experts across the broader program.
• Monitor delivery against contract deliverables and sprint commitments on a per-sprint engagement, flagging scope, schedule, or staffing risks early and proposing corrective actions.
• Support onboarding, delivery governance, KPI definition, and backlog structuring at engagement start-up, and lead closeout activities at engagement end, including ticket closure, documentation finalization, and transition support.

• Minimum 5 years of combined experience in business and systems analysis and project management/project lead supporting software development teams.
• Bachelor's degree in Information Systems, Computer Science, Business, Library or Information Science, or a related field, or equivalent additional experience.
• Demonstrated experience working in Agile and Scrum environments, including facilitating Agile ceremonies and managing user-story-based delivery.
• Hands-on experience with project tracking and reporting in JIRA or an equivalent tool, including story point metrics, dashboards, and burndown and velocity reporting.
• Experience with digital content or digital collections management, such as content ingest, digital asset workflows, metadata management, or content exchange between systems.
• Experience analyzing and documenting workflow systems, including workflow states, business rules, roles and permissions, and exception handling.
• Strong working knowledge of software development lifecycle (SDLC) best practices, including requirements definition, design documentation, testing, and release processes.
• Demonstrated ability to produce precise analytical artifacts such as business rules, data and metadata mapping matrices, process flows, and user stories with acceptance criteria.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including experience preparing and delivering status reporting to client or government stakeholders.
• Ability to work independently and keep a distributed, fully remote team coordinated and on schedule.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supporting federal government clients on Agile software development engagements.
• Familiarity with metadata standards such as Dublin Core, METS, MODS, or MARC, and with digital preservation concepts.
• Experience as a Scrum Master or Agile delivery lead, and certifications such as CSM, PMP, or PMI-ACP.
• Experience supporting performance-based contracts monitored under a Quality Assurance Surveillance Plan (QASP).
• Familiarity with the program's technical environment, including Python and Django services, REST APIs, ETL concepts, search platforms such as Solr and Elasticsearch, AWS, and relational databases, sufficient to communicate credibly with developers.
• Experience with reporting and visualization tools such as Tableau or Grafana.
• Familiarity with accessibility requirements under Section 508 and WCAG 2.1 and their impact on requirements and acceptance criteria.
• Experience working with Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) or in environments governed by NIST SP 800-53.

Travel Requirements 

This is a remote position; however, occasional travel may be required based on project needs, client meetings, team collaboration events, or training sessions. Travel is expected to be less than 10% and will be communicated in advance whenever possible. 

EEO Statement

Aretum is committed to fostering a workplace rooted in excellence, integrity, and equal opportunity for all. We adhere to merit-based hiring practices, ensuring that all employment decisions are made based on qualifications, skills, and ability to perform the job, without preference or consideration of factors unrelated to job performance. 

As an Equal Opportunity Employer, Aretum complies with all applicable federal, state, and local employment laws. 

We are proud to support our nation’s veterans and military families, providing career opportunities that honor their service and experience. 

If you require reasonable accommodation during the hiring process due to a disability, please contact [email protected] for assistance. 

Equal Opportunity Employer/Veterans/Disabled 

U.S. Work Authorization

Applicants must be U.S. citizens or currently authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis. This position supports a federal government contract and requires the ability to obtain and maintain a Public Trust or Suitability Determination, depending on the agency’s background investigation requirements. Sponsorship is not available. 

• Salary Range: $95,000–$117,000 annually. Final compensation will be determined based on factors including education, experience, qualifications, skills, and applicable contract requirements.
• Health Care Plan (Medical, Dental & Vision)   

• Retirement Plan (401k)  

• Life Insurance (Basic, Voluntary & AD&D)   

• Paid Time Off  

• Family Leave (Maternity, Paternity)   

• Short Term & Long-Term Disability   

• Training & Development