Business Analyst (Non-IT) 4 - Marine R&E / Budget Analyst

Role name: Business Analyst (Non-IT) 4 – Marine R&E / Budget Analyst
Pay Rate: $35 - 40/hr

Work Location: Virginia Beach, VA 

About The AES Group: 
For over 20 years, The AES Group has been a trusted technology staffing and services partner to some of the world’s most innovative enterprises. We bring businesses and talent together to deliver impactful cloud, data, AI, and digital solutions that transform organizations and create lasting value. At AES, we believe partnerships are the cornerstone of sustainable growth. By forging strategic alliances with IT staffing firms, MSPs, and government prime contractors, we amplify our reach, deliver greater value to clients, and accelerate innovation. Our success is built on collaboration, trust, and a shared commitment to solving complex workforce challenges together. 

Position Overview

Client is seeking a Business Analyst / Budget Analyst to support Marine R&E budget management through financial analysis, accounting reconciliation, data investigation, and structured problem solving. The ideal candidate will be a finance/data hybrid who can investigate unexplained financial variances at the transaction level, trace issues through underlying data and organizational processes, and identify root causes.

This role will work closely with the Marine Product Team, Marine Data Science Team, and Business Resources organizations to improve financial data quality, budget traceability, reconciliation, and reporting processes.

Key Responsibilities

• Analyze and reconcile budgets, forecasts, actuals, affordability, and financial reporting.
• Investigate unexplained charges and trace transactions to the appropriate program, job, cost center, and organization.
• Perform transaction-level root-cause analysis of financial discrepancies and recurring data-quality issues.
• Investigate missing or delayed invoices, classification issues, and other reconciliation variances.
• Review and approve contracts, cost proposals, contract supplements, project structures, and business-process documentation.
• Monitor project budgets, expenditures, transaction controls, and costs against approved budgets.
• Identify potential budget overruns and provide recommendations for resolution.
• Develop and document finance business rules and data-quality controls in collaboration with Data Science teams.
• Improve program-level financial traceability, including situations involving multiple or changing PIDs/jobs.
• Establish sustainable processes for identifying, assigning, resolving, and preventing recurring budget issues.
• Collaborate with Finance, Engineering, Business Resources, and Data Science teams.
• Document findings, requirements, processes, and proposed solutions.
• Present findings, recommendations, and timeline expectations to the Work Director.
• Support vendor/sub-consultant agreements and invoice review as needed.

Required Qualifications

• 8–10 years of relevant professional experience.
• Bachelor's degree in Business Management, Economics, Finance, Accounting, or a related field.
• Strong experience with financial data analysis and reconciliation.
• Demonstrated ability to investigate and resolve financial discrepancies rather than simply report variances.
• Strong Microsoft Excel skills.
• Experience with Power BI and/or data models.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to work independently and manage priorities with limited direction.
• Strong analytical, mathematical, problem-solving, and documentation skills.
• Experience managing or analyzing budgets and financial datasets.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience developing data-quality, reconciliation, or financial controls.
• Experience with enterprise applications.
• Experience working across Finance, Engineering, Business Resources, and Data Science teams.
• Experience coordinating small-scale projects or providing informal project leadership.
• Experience with business-process documentation and improvement.

Top 3 Skills

1. Financial Data Reconciliation & Discrepancy Investigation – Ability to reconcile large datasets and trace financial discrepancies to their root cause.
2. Analytical Problem Solving & Documentation – Ability to investigate complex issues and communicate findings in a clear, concise manner.
3. Project Coordination – Ability to coordinate delivery across teams and provide informal leadership on small-scale initiatives.