Lead Business Analyst - W2 only

****Candidates MUST BE local to Reston, VA****This is a W2 position***C2C/OPT-EAD candidates are not eligible to apply for this role. Role: Lead Business Analyst W2 Contract-to-Hire: 12 Months Location: Hybrid in Reston, VACandidates must be comfortable working onsite in Reston, VA once or twice per week plus mandatory in-person Sprint and PI Planning sessions.Overview & Responsibilities:Work with a leading organization in the healthcare industry on high-priority and challenging projects, including the development of new features for the in-house built Member 360 application (an Angular-based platform). This is a strategic role for a motivated self-starter who will act as a senior expert, providing guidance, ensuring feature quality, and helping to shape the project direction in a large-scale Agile/DevOps environment.You will Function as a self-starting Lead BA, quickly picking up work and helping to manage the overall workflow for features.Serve as the primary liaison between the Product Owner/stakeholders and the development/architecture teams.Mentor or provide guidance to any junior Business Analyst team members.Analyze business needs, create workflows, and brainstorm on best implementation practices for features.Write detailed user stories (aiming for 10-15 per week) and end-to-end test stories in JIRA.Define and implement non-functional requirements (NFRs), including security, performance, and user experience (UX) for new features.Translate complex requirements related to API/web services and downstream data dependencies into technical user stories.Conduct demos with customers and leadership teams.Required Qualifications:Minimum of 8 years of progressive experience in business analysis.Solid Agile experience and the ability to work in a large-scale, multi-team environment.Hands-on experience with creating user stories (e.g., creating 10-15 per week) in JIRA.Prior ServiceNow implementation experience.Strong ability to collaborate with developers and architects.Proven experience in a DevOps environment.Preferred Qualifications:Experience or comfort working within a framework like SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework).Knowledge of API/web service requirements analysis and writing user stories based on those dependencies.Background in the Health Insurance or Healthcare industry.