Business Analyst (Dutch required)

About us

VIB (Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie) is an entrepreneurial research institute, with a clear focus on ground-breaking strategic basic research in life sciences and operates in close partnership with the universities in Flanders.

The ICT department at VIB ensures that assets, technology, information, and data are managed securely and efficiently. Our focus includes:

• Supporting and improving the ICT infrastructure, including networks, hardware, and critical systems.
• Enabling digital transformation initiatives across the organization.
• Securing and supporting applications, information and data flows, and software integrations.
• Helping researchers and support services work efficiently through modern, reliable digital services.

To strengthen the ICT HQ team in Ghent, VIB is looking for a Business Analyst who helps translate business needs into practical, working solutions. This position is offered on a full-time basis.

About the role

As a Business Analyst, you play a key role in translating business needs into clear, structured, and actionable requirements and processes that enable effective and sustainable ICT solutions.

You act as the connector between business, ICT, and external partners, ensuring alignment across all parties throughout analysis and delivery. You engage with stakeholders to understand context and objectives, ask the right questions, and facilitate clear, outcome-driven discussions. You ensure that decisions and agreements are accurately captured, validated, and carried through into implementation.

You combine strong analytical thinking with a structured detailed-oriented approach to documentation. You ensure requirements are complete, consistent, and usable, while remaining meaningful and accessible for both business and ICT stakeholders.

You take a holistic view of processes and systems, ensuring dependencies and cross-domain impacts are clearly identified. You actively challenge existing ways of working and help shape improvements where standardization, simplification, or better tooling can lead to more scalable and sustainable outcomes.

You take ownership of your topics from initial analysis through to implementation, ensuring continuity, progress, and alignment throughout the full delivery lifecycle.

You work closely with key users, solution architects, vendors, and system integrators to ensure solutions are well-designed, feasible, and successfully delivered.

You will report to the Lead Business Analyst.

Key responsibilities

As a Business Analyst, you will:

Understanding & analyzing business needs and process

• Engage with stakeholders to understand processes, needs, and challenges.
• Analyze and translate requirements into clear, structured, and actionable outputs.
• Document requirements in a precise, unambiguous, and structured way so they can be effectively used by ICT teams and vendors.
• Identify assumptions, dependencies, constraints, and cross-system impacts.
• Challenge requests to ensure they are consistent, realistic, and value driven.

Shaping solutions

• Translate requirements into concrete solution directions with the solution architects.
• Assess the fit between business needs, standard solutions, and existing systems.
• Support discussions on process improvement, simplification, and standardization.
• Contribute to decisions on process adaptation versus system configuration.
• Promote scalable, maintainable, and future-proof solutions.

Delivery & ownership

• Take ownership of topics from analysis through to implementation.
• Ensure requirements remain clear, consistent, and aligned throughout delivery.
• Maintain clear and traceable documentation throughout the lifecycle to avoid ambiguity and ensure alignment.
• Support prioritization and structuring of work (e.g., backlog management).
• Act as a reference point during implementation to clarify requirements, processes, and intent.

Stakeholder alignment & communication

• Act as a central point of contact for functional questions.
• Align stakeholders across business, ICT, and external partners.
• Communicate impacts, dependencies, and solution constraints clearly.
• Facilitate discussions and support decision-making.

Collaboration with vendors & partners

• Work closely with vendors, system integrators, and external partners.
• Follow up on delivery and ensure alignment with agreed requirements and processes.
• Challenge where needed to safeguard quality and expectations.

Documentation & continuous improvement

• Produce clear and high-quality artefacts such as (non-)functional requirements, process flows, decision logs and action points.
• Ensure documentation is clear, structured, complete, and traceable from analysis through to implementation.
• Translate discussions into documentation that removes ambiguity and can be reliably used for delivery and validation.
• Contribute to improving templates, standards, and ways of working within ICT.
• Identify opportunities to improve processes and support continuous optimization.

Your profile

• You have at least 3 years of relevant professional experience as a Business Analyst, Functional Analyst, or in a similar role within ICT, software development/implementation, or digital environments (e.g., Product Owner).
• You have a bachelor’s or master’s degree, or equivalent through experience.
• You have a strong analytical and structured mindset, with the ability to see the bigger picture across systems and processes.
• You are comfortable navigating across business and technical contexts.
• You take ownership and drive topics through to completion.
• You are pragmatic and solution-oriented, with a focus on workable and sustainable outcomes.
• You are a confident communicator who can engage stakeholders and explain complex topics clearly.
• You are able to challenge constructively and promote best practices while maintaining stakeholder engagement.
• You enjoy working in an environment where not everything is predefined and where initiative is expected.

Skills and capabilities

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with attention to detail.
• Ability to structure complex topics into clear, concise, and actionable elements.
• Clear and effective communication tailored to different stakeholders.
• Ability to balance detail with pragmatism and focus on value.
• Solid understanding of ICT concepts and system interactions.
• Comfortable using basic ICT and application terminology in documentation and discussions.
• Accurate and disciplined in documentation, ensuring clarity and traceability.
• Comfortable collaborating with a variety of stakeholders (business, ICT, external partners).
• Experience working with external vendors or system integrators is a plus.
• Fluent in Dutch and English, both written and spoken.

Our offer

• An open-ended contract on a full-time basis
• Competitive salary based on experience and expertise, including a strong benefits package  (e.g. internet allowance, meal vouchers, smartphone, hospitalization insurance, eco-cheques, group insurance, …).
• You will work within an innovative, challenging, mission-driven and international working environment in the large life-sciences network of VIB.
• We offer opportunities for personal development. Taking additional training and courses is certainly possible if relevant to the performance of the job.
• Our offices are located at the state-of-the-art VIB headquarters in Ghent. 
• Possibility to work from home (2 days/week) and flexible working hours (work-life balance). 
• We are an organization that values diversity in backgrounds and in experiences. Diversity not only includes race and gender identity, but also nationality, age, disability status, sexual orientation, religion and many other parts of one’s identity. VIB is therefore looking for candidates who share a passion for science that generates an impact on society and care deeply about supporting each other's growth.