Business Data Specialist at Stride, Inc. in Columbia, South Carolina

Business Data Specialist

The Business Data Specialist develops, maintains, and supports business-critical data products that enable operational reporting, compliance, funding, and analytics across the organization. The role partners closely with Data Engineering, Data Domains, Dev Ops, Data Governance, Analytics, and Business teams to ensure domain-specific data products are accurate, traceable, well-documented, and aligned with business requirements. This position combines strong technical data skills with deep business understanding.

The Data Specialist develops and enhances dbt models, fulfills complex data requests, validates data quality, investigates production issues, and ensures data products remain maintainable and audit-ready throughout their lifecycle. Over time, the individual is expected to become the technical subject matter expert for assigned business domains, developing expertise in the underlying business processes, configuration logic, business rules, and data lineage needed to support critical operational, reporting, and compliance requirements.

Essential Functions:

• Develop, maintain, and enhance domain-specific data products and data models using dbt and Snowflake to support operational reporting, analytics, compliance, funding, and business processes.
• Partner with the Data Domains team to identify, define, and incorporate enterprise data required to support business-critical data products.
• Translate business requirements into scalable, reusable technical solutions while balancing immediate business needs with long-term maintainability.
• Design and implement technical solutions for complex ad hoc data requests while identifying opportunities to create reusable data assets.
• Perform data validation, reconciliation, root cause analysis, and quality assurance to ensure the integrity, accuracy, and completeness of production data.
• Investigate data quality and production issues, identify root causes across upstream and downstream systems, and partner with cross-functional teams to implement sustainable solutions.
• Design and maintain configuration-driven solutions that simplify complex business rules while ensuring configuration consistency, usability, and appropriate validation of dependent settings.
• Develop a deep understanding of how business configurations drive system logic and reporting to ensure data products accurately reflect business intent.
• Ensure data models are traceable, well-documented, and defensible through clear business rules, metadata, testing, and lineage documentation to support audit and compliance requirements.
• Apply systems thinking to understand how data, business rules, configurations, and downstream reporting interact, proactively identifying risks, dependencies, and opportunities to simplify complex processes.
• Become the technical subject matter expert for assigned business domains, developing expertise in business processes, data lineage, reporting requirements, and system functionality.
• Collaborate with Business Analysts to translate functional requirements into scalable technical solutions while providing guidance on technical capabilities, implementation approaches, and data impacts.
• Work closely with Data Engineering, Dev Ops, Data Governance, Analytics, and other cross-functional teams to ensure data products meet enterprise standards for quality, security, performance, and governance.
• Evaluate existing data products and technical designs to identify opportunities to improve scalability, performance, maintainability, usability, and data quality.
• Create and maintain technical documentation, business rules, configuration documentation, validation procedures, and data definitions.
• Process confidential and sensitive data in accordance with organizational policies, regulatory requirements, and data governance standards.

Required Qualifications:

• Five (5) to Seven (7) years of relevant professional experience with data analysis.
• Advanced Microsoft Excel skills
• Demonstrated experience communicating with various stakeholders including teachers and school leaders
• Self-motivated to solve emergent issues with the best available tools and is expected to work collaboratively…