Principal BI Analyst

Overview

The Principal Business Intelligence Analyst serves as a strategic analytics partner responsible for transforming complex data into actionable insights that drive commercial performance, operational excellence, and enterprise decision-making. This role collaborates closely with executive leadership, Sales, Marketing, Finance, and Business Unit stakeholders to identify business opportunities, influence strategy, and deliver scalable analytics solutions.

The ideal candidate combines deep technical expertise, strong business acumen, and a consultative mindset to translate complex data into meaningful recommendations. This individual will lead high-impact analytical initiatives, establish reporting best practices, and serve as a trusted advisor to stakeholders across the organization.

In addition to delivering advanced analytics and reporting solutions, the Principal Business Intelligence Analyst plays a key role in advancing the organization's data maturity by driving continuous improvement, promoting data governance standards, and enabling data-driven decision-making at all levels of the business.

The Principal Business Intelligence Analyst will thrive in ambiguous environments and have the ability to influence analytical priorities by engaging stakeholders to ask the right business questions. They will be particularly adept at translating complex or vague business questions into actionable analytical solutions that maximize business impact.

Responsibilities

Strategic Analytics & Business Insights

• Lead complex analytical initiatives that support strategic planning, commercial performance, and operational decision-making.
• Identify trends, risks, opportunities, and performance drivers through advanced analysis of sales, marketing, customer, product, financial, and market data.
• Develop actionable recommendations that influence business strategy and improve organizational outcomes.
• Translate ambiguous business questions into structured analytical approaches and measurable solutions.
• Present insights and recommendations to senior leadership and executive stakeholders, tailoring communication to both technical and non-technical audiences.

Business Intelligence & Reporting Leadership

• Design, develop, and optimize enterprise-level Power BI dashboards, reports, scorecards, and self-service analytics solutions.
• Establish scalable reporting frameworks that provide visibility into key performance indicators (KPIs) and business objectives.
• Drive reporting standardization, governance, and consistency across business functions.
• Partner with stakeholders to define and evolve performance metrics, business definitions, and reporting requirements.
• Lead executive reporting processes and support recurring business reviews with timely, accurate, and actionable insights.

Stakeholder Engagement & Strategic Partnership

• Serve as a trusted advisor to Sales, Marketing, Finance, and Business Unit leadership teams.
• Partner with cross-functional stakeholders to understand strategic priorities and translate business needs into analytical solutions.
• Facilitate requirements gathering, solution design, and stakeholder alignment across multiple initiatives.
• Influence decision-making by proactively identifying opportunities and providing data-driven recommendations.
• Mentor business partners in the effective use and interpretation of analytics and reporting tools.

Data Management, Governance & Continuous Improvement

• Develop and optimize complex SQL queries and data models to support analytics and reporting requirements.
• Collaborate with Data Engineering and Architecture teams to ensure data availability, quality, scalability, and integrity.
• Drive improvements in data quality, reporting efficiency, automation, and analytics capabilities.
• Contribute to enterprise data governance initiatives, documentation standards, and analytics best practices.
• Identify opportunities to leverage emerging technologies, advanced analytics, and automation to improve business outcomes.

Leadership & Mentorship

• Provide technical guidance and mentorship to analysts and business users across the organization.
• Promote best practices in business intelligence, reporting development, and data visualization.
• Lead analytics projects and coordinate efforts across multiple stakeholders and teams.
• Foster a culture of data-driven decision-making and continuous improvement.

Qualifications

Required

• Bachelor's degree in Business Analytics, Data Science, Statistics, Economics, Information Systems, Computer Science, or a related field.
• 6+ years of experience in business intelligence, analytics, data analysis, or a related discipline.
• Advanced SQL skills and extensive experience working with large-scale relational and cloud-based data environments.
• Expertise developing enterprise reporting and dashboard solutions using Power BI or equivalent business intelligence platforms.
• Experience working with modern cloud data platforms such as Databricks, Snowflake, Azure Synapse, Azure Data Lake, or equivalent technologies.
• Demonstrated ability to translate complex business problems into analytical solutions and strategic recommendations.
• Strong stakeholder management, consulting, and communication skills with experience supporting senior leadership.
• Experience influencing beyond Arole and scope and challenging assumptions.
• Demonstrated ability to work independently with minimal direction in ambiguous environments.
• Proven ability to manage multiple priorities and deliver results in a fast-paced environment.

Preferred

• Experience supporting commercial, go-to-market, revenue operations, or sales analytics functions.
• Experience applying customer, market, competitive, and commercial insights to business strategy and decision-making.
• Familiarity with Salesforce and related CRM, marketing, or customer data platforms.
• Experience with Python, R, or other analytical and statistical programming languages.

Company Description

Waters Corporation (NYSE:WAT)  is a global leader in life sciences and diagnostics, dedicated to accelerating the benefits of pioneering science through analytical technologies, informatics, and service. With a focus on regulated, high-volume testing environments, our innovative portfolio harnesses deep scientific expertise across chemistry, physics, and biology. We collaborate with customers around the world to advance the release of effective, high-quality medicines, ensure the safety of food and water, and drive better patient outcomes by detecting diseases earlier, managing routine infections, and combating antibiotic resistance. Through a shared culture of relentless innovation, our passionate team of ~16,000 colleagues turn scientific challenges into breakthroughs that improve lives worldwide.  

Diversity and inclusion are fundamental to our core values at Waters Corporation. It benefits our employees, our products, our customers and our community. Waters complies with all applicable federal, state, and local laws. Qualified applicants are considered without regard to sex, race, color, ancestry, national origin, citizenship status, religion, age, marital status (including civil unions), military service, veteran status, pregnancy (including childbirth and related medical conditions), genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity, legally recognized disability, domestic violence victim status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Waters is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. All hiring decisions are based solely on qualifications, merit, and business needs at the time.

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