Senior Business Partner, Finance Business Partnering

About us

At National Grid, we’re at the heart of the energy transition—building smarter, cleaner, and more resilient energy systems. Finance plays a critical role by combining commercial insight with data, analytics, automation, and emerging technologies to help the business make better decisions, faster.

We are actively evolving how finance partners with the business—moving away from manual, backward looking reporting toward automated, insight driven, and AI enabled finance. This evolution emphasizes analytical rigor, transparency, and tools that support clear and confident business decision making.

About the Role

The Senior Analyst – Finance Business Partner supports Infrastructure & Operations (I&O) within the US IT organization, with a strong emphasis on advanced analytics, statistical modeling, automation, and the application of AI solutions.
This role partners closely with senior I&O leaders to deliver financial insight, while also designing and implementing modern, data driven and AI enabled solutions that improve forecasting, performance management, and decision support.

A core expectation of the role is the ability to build quantitative models—including regression based and driver based models—and clearly explain assumptions, drivers, sensitivities, and limitations to non technical business stakeholders.

Ideally this role will be based in Waltham, MA, but we will consider candidates in Syracuse and/or Brooklyn, NY with a hybrid working expectation of at least two days per week in the office.

What You'll Do

Finance Business Partnering & Insight
•    Act as a trusted finance partner to I&O leaders, combining financial expertise with data  and analytics driven insight.
•    Proactively identify trends, risks, and opportunities using advanced analytics rather than purely retrospective variance analysis.
•    Translate complex financial and analytical model outputs into clear, actionable insights for senior stakeholders, including explanation of key drivers, sensitivities, and trade offs.

Advanced Analytics, Automation & AI Enablement
•    Design, develop, and maintain advanced analytics and automated financial solutions, including forecasting, performance analysis, scenario modeling, and statistically sound predictive models (e.g., regression based and driver based models).
•    Build, test, and validate financial and operational models using appropriate statistical techniques (e.g., regression analysis, sensitivity testing, error measurement), ensuring robustness, transparency, and repeatability.
•    Design and/or implement AI enabled use cases within finance (e.g., predictive forecasting, anomaly detection, driver based analysis, narrative generation, or decision support), with appropriate governance and explainability.
•    Apply advanced data manipulation techniques to large, complex, multi source datasets to enable scalable and repeatable insights.
•    Reduce manual reporting and analysis through automation, standardization, and AI driven approaches.
•    Document model logic, assumptions, drivers, and limitations, ensuring outputs are suitable for business discussion and review.
•    Partner with Finance and IT teams to identify, test, and scale practical AI and analytics solutions aligned to business needs and governance standards.

Planning, Forecasting & Performance Management
•    Lead budget and forecast activities for assigned I&O cost centers using data driven and predictive techniques, including driver based and regression based approaches where appropriate.
•    Analyze monthly and year to date performance versus budget and forecast with a strong forward looking focus.
•    Partner with FP&A and Controllership to ensure data integrity, transparency, and consistency across models and outputs, including alignment on assumptions, methodologies, and documented logic.

Continuous Improvement & Digital Finance
•    Drive continuous improvement across finance processes, data quality, analytics capability, and tooling.
•    Collaborate with Finance, IT, and Enterprise teams on analytics platforms and systems (e.g., Power BI, Apptio, SAP, AI and analytics tools).
•    Contribute to broader US IT Finance initiatives focused on digital finance, automation, and the responsible adoption of AI and advanced analytics.

What You'll Need

Statistical Modeling, Analytics & AI (Core Requirements)
•    Experience building and applying statistical and analytical models (e.g., regression based, driver based, or predictive models) in a business or finance context.
•    Ability to assess model performance, reliability, and limitations using appropriate diagnostics and validation techniques.
•    Experience designing analytics and AI solutions that are transparent, explainable, and appropriate for business and regulatory decision making.
•    Strong data manipulation skills, including working with large, complex, and multi source datasets.
•    Proficiency in analytical programming tools such as R and/or Python for data analysis, modeling, and automation, in addition to advanced Excel.
•    Experience with analytics and visualization tools such as Power BI, Tableau, or similar, including communicating model outputs to non technical audiences.
•    Ability to automate and enhance financial processes using analytics, AI, and modern tooling.
Finance & Business Partnering
•    Proven experience in finance business partnering, FP&A, or management reporting within a complex organization.
•    Strong commercial acumen with the ability to link financial performance to operational outcomes.
•    Excellent communication skills, with the ability to turn data  and analytics driven outputs into insight and action.

•    Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, Data Analytics, Computer Science, or a related field.
•    Advanced degree or professional certification (MBA, CPA, CFA, or data/analytics related certification) is a plus but not required.
•    Experience with enterprise finance and analytics systems (e.g., SAP, Apptio, Power BI) preferred.

•    A strong passion for data, analytics, and modern finance tools.
•    Experience designing analytical solutions—not just producing reports.
•    Ability to operate in ambiguous environments and work with evolving technologies.
•    Ability to engage confidently with senior stakeholders and explain complex technical and analytical concepts in clear, practical business terms.
•    Ability to value analytical rigor, transparency, and explainability, and can clearly articulate how a model works—not just what it outputs.
•    Motivation to modernize how finance operates.

More Information

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