Lead Systems Analyst

The Lead Systems Analyst works directly with business owners across order management, distribution, EDI, and finance operations to document required behavior, validate what is actually used, prioritize what gets modernized first, define acceptance criteria, and coordinate business sign-off for production cutovers., + Discovery and documentation - Work with business and technical teams to document required functionality, production usage, business rules, interfaces, reports, and dependencies for each modernization module, using AI-assisted analysis and documentation tooling to accelerate the work.

• Usage validation and retirement analysis - Determine which legacy programs, jobs, reports, and interfaces are still used and still needed; build the evidence case for retiring what is not; obtain business-owner approval for retirement decisions.

• Requirements translation - Convert business requirements and legacy behavior into clear, testable solution requirements that engineers can implement directly: data mappings, business-rule specifications, acceptance criteria, and edge-case definitions.

• Prioritization with the business - Run recurring priority reviews with business stakeholders; translate operational pain (failures, delays, manual workarounds) into modernization sequencing.

• Validation and cutover sign-off - Review reconciliation and parallel-run results (first-pass data comparison is performed by the QA / Test Automation Engineer) from the business perspective: confirm that differences are explained, that required business behavior is preserved, and that edge cases the business cares about are covered. Coordinate business user testing and provide the business sign-off that gates each production cutover.

• Stakeholder communication - Serve as the credible, consistent voice between the modernization team and the business users who depend on the system daily: what is changing, when, and why it is safe.

• 7+ years of business/systems analysis experience , including significant experience on large-scale order processing, fulfillment, or supply-chain systems.

• Experience with EDI, order processing, and shipment-confirmation processing for large-scale distribution or publishing operations - including order intake and acknowledgements, distribution/warehouse orchestration, and invoicing flows.

• Experience using AI tools for discovery and documentation - e.g., AI-assisted code or system analysis, requirements extraction, or documentation generation - and the judgment to validate AI output against real system behavior.

• Demonstrated ability to work effectively with both business users and engineers - comfortable eliciting requirements from operations staff in business language and defending those requirements in technical design discussions.

• Proven ability to translate business requirements into coding/solution requirements - data mappings, rule specifications, and acceptance criteria precise enough for direct implementation and test automation.

• Strong analytical writing: able to produce documentation that becomes the authoritative record of system behavior.

• The judgment to distinguish a true business rule from a historical implementation accident.

Preferred Qualifications

• Publishing-industry experience.

• Experience on a legacy-modernization, system-replacement, or platform-migration program.

• Exposure to legacy or mainframe-style environments (e.g., COBOL-era batch systems) - enough familiarity to work effectively with legacy specialists when documenting system behavior. No programming or code-reading skills required.

• Familiarity with SQL - able to read queries and data-reconciliation reports and reason about data-level parity between systems.

• Familiarity with batch scheduling environments (AutoSys or similar) and overnight batch operations.

• Experience with warehouse management (WMS), 3PL, or drop-ship integration workflows.

• Experience coordinating user acceptance testing and production cutover approvals.

The hiring salary range for this position applies to New York City, California, Colorado, Washington state, and most other geographies. Starting pay for the successful applicant depends on a variety of job-related factors, including but not limited to geographic location, market demands, experience, training, and education. The benefits available for this position include medical, dental, vision, 401(k) plan, life insurance coverage, disability benefits, tuition assistance program and PTO or, if applicable. Additionally, employees have access to our industry-first, Broad Based Ownership program, which makes all employees partners in our shared success.

Simon & Schuster was named to Forbes magazine list of America’s Best Mid-Size Employers 2022. Simon & Schuster is a global leader in general interest publishing, dedicated to providing the best in fiction and nonfiction for readers of all ages, and in all printed, digital and audio formats. Its distinguished roster of authors includes many of the world’s most popular and widely recognized writers, and winners of the most prestigious literary honors and awards. It is home to numerous well-known imprints and divisions such as Simon & Schuster, Scribner, Atria Books, Gallery Books, Pocket Books, Adams Media, Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing and Simon & Schuster Audio and international companies in Australia, Canada, India and the United Kingdom, and proudly brings the works of its authors to readers in more than 200 countries and territories. For more information visit our website at www.simonandschuster.com.

Simon & Schuster is modernizing UOPS, the core order-processing platform that drives order management, fulfillment, partner integration, and financial transactions for the company. The multi-year program, approved by executive leadership in August 2026, replaces legacy COBOL batch processing with modern .NET and SQL solutions using an AI-assisted approach - and its success depends as much on business understanding as on engineering.

The Lead Systems Analyst is the bridge between business operations and the modernization engineering team. This is a senior, high-judgment role: the hardest part of modernizing a 40-year-old system is not writing new code - it is understanding what the legacy system actually does, confirming which behaviors still matter to the business, and proving that replacements behave correctly before they take over production. This role owns that judgment., Candidates hired for this or any other posted Simon & Schuster role will be employees of Simon & Schuster, LLC, subject to all policies, including the Workplace Privacy Notice (https://www.simonandschuster.com/p/workplace-privacy-notice) , and eligible solely for the benefits plans thereof.