Senior Operations Analyst

Senior Operations Analyst

Department: Property Management - Operations
Reports To: Senior Director of Enterprise Operations
FLSA Status: Exempt
Location: Charlotte, NC, with periodic portfolio travel
Direct Reports: None

Position Overview

The Senior Operations Analyst is a highly analytical, cross-functional role responsible for helping improve operational performance, financial visibility, process consistency, and decision-making across the property management portfolio.

This position combines operational analysis, financial and business analysis, process improvement, project management, and systems and data utilization. The Senior Analyst works closely with Operations leadership to evaluate performance, identify trends and risks, investigate root causes, and translate financial and operational data into practical recommendations and measurable improvements.

This role goes beyond compiling reports or identifying that a problem exists. The Senior Analyst is expected to understand why performance is occurring, quantify the business or financial impact where possible, determine whether issues are driven by process, systems, training, execution, or other factors, and help develop and implement the appropriate solution.

The ideal candidate is financially savvy, operationally curious, highly analytical, and comfortable working across departments and levels of the organization. This individual should be equally comfortable analyzing a property-level financial statement, reviewing a business process in the field, developing a dashboard, facilitating a process-improvement effort, or managing a defined project through implementation.

Key Responsibilities

Financial & Business Analysis

• Review and analyze property and portfolio financial performance, including revenue, operating expenses, Net Operating Income (NOI), budget variances, forecasts, and historical performance.
• Analyze revenue and expense variances and investigate the operational factors contributing to financial results.
• Support budgeting and reforecasting activities through trend analysis, benchmarking, assumption validation, and supporting analysis.
• Analyze key performance drivers including occupancy, vacancy, concessions, delinquency, bad debt, unit turns, maintenance costs, vendor utilization, payroll, and controllable operating expenses.
• Identify financial and operational trends, risks, anomalies, and opportunities requiring further evaluation.
• Quantify the financial or operational impact of identified issues and opportunities where possible.
• Develop business cases, scenario analyses, and supporting financial analysis for proposed operational changes, investments, systems, staffing models, and process improvements.
• Translate complex analysis into clear findings, recommendations, and next steps for operational leadership.

Operational Performance & Quality Assurance

• Conduct structured operational reviews and audits across areas such as leasing, delinquency and collections, maintenance coordination, unit turns, purchasing, documentation, compliance workflows, and system utilization.
• Conduct post-implementation reviews following new policies, procedures, systems, and operational changes to evaluate adoption and effectiveness.
• Identify recurring operational deficiencies, inconsistencies, control gaps, and performance risks.
• Document findings, recommended corrective actions, responsible parties, and expected timelines, and assist with tracking items through resolution.
• Evaluate whether established procedures and operational practices are producing their intended results.
• Conduct periodic site visits and field reviews to understand property-level execution and validate that reported information aligns with what is occurring operationally.
• Provide objective, data-supported observations and recommendations to Operations leadership.

KPI, Reporting & Business Intelligence

• Develop, maintain, and continuously improve operational and financial reporting used by Operations leadership.
• Develop and maintain dashboards that provide visibility into key performance indicators, trends, risks, and opportunities.
• Analyze data across properties, regions, and business functions to identify patterns, outliers, and areas requiring further investigation.
• Help establish consistent KPI definitions and reporting methodologies across the portfolio.
• Partner with Operations, Accounting/Finance, and IT to validate data integrity and investigate reporting discrepancies.
• Use advanced Excel and business intelligence tools to analyze, organize, and visualize complex financial and operational information.
• Identify opportunities to automate or streamline recurring reporting and improve the usability of information provided to leadership.
• Support increased use of Power BI and similar tools to turn operational data into meaningful, actionable business intelligence.

Process Improvement & Root Cause Analysis

• Perform root cause analysis to determine whether identified issues are driven by process design, training, system configuration, execution, resource constraints, or other factors.
• Identify and recommend opportunities to improve operational efficiency, consistency, controls, and performance.
• Lead or support defined process-improvement initiatives from analysis through implementation and measurement.
• Apply Lean, Six Sigma, continuous improvement, process mapping, or comparable methodologies where appropriate.
• Document current-state processes, identify gaps or unnecessary complexity, and assist in developing improved future-state workflows.
• Partner with appropriate stakeholders to develop solutions that address underlying causes rather than temporary symptoms.
• Establish measures for process improvements and evaluate whether implemented changes achieve the intended results.
• Recommend additional adjustments when results do not meet expectations.

Project Management & Implementation

• Lead or coordinate defined cross-functional projects involving operational improvements, systems, reporting, workflow changes, and other business initiatives.
• Support projects from planning through implementation, including requirements gathering, stakeholder coordination, milestone tracking, testing, communication, and post-implementation evaluation.
• Help establish clear project objectives and measurable success criteria.
• Track risks, dependencies, action items, and deliverables and communicate progress to project stakeholders and leadership.
• Coordinate across departments to ensure business and operational requirements are understood and incorporated into solutions.
• Participate in testing and validation of new systems, modules, integrations, reports, and workflows.
• Evaluate results following implementation and identify opportunities for further improvement.

Systems & Operational Technology

• Develop strong working knowledge of systems supporting property operations, including Yardi and related platforms.
• Evaluate system utilization, workflow efficiency, reporting capabilities, adoption, and data quality from an operational perspective.
• Identify system functionality or workflow improvements that could increase efficiency, accuracy, consistency, or financial performance.
• Partner with IT and business stakeholders on system enhancements, implementations, integrations, testing, and adoption.
• Help ensure systems and technology are being effectively utilized to support established business processes.
• Serve as a knowledgeable business resource while maintaining the distinction between operational systems analysis and technical IT administration.

Cross-Functional Partnership

• Partner closely with Operations, Accounting/Finance, Asset Management, Compliance, Training, IT, and field leadership.
• Participate in operational and financial performance discussions and provide analysis to support decision-making.
• Work directly with Regional and property leadership to understand performance challenges and gather operational context.
• Communicate findings and recommendations clearly, objectively, and constructively.
• Build credibility across the organization through accurate analysis, strong follow-through, practical problem-solving, and responsiveness.
• Influence improvement and action through data and business insight without requiring direct authority.

Qualifications

Required

• Bachelor's degree in Business, Finance, Accounting, Operations Management, Real Estate, or a related field; or an Associate's degree with significant relevant professional experience.
• Approximately 5+ years of progressive experience in operations, property management, business or financial analysis, process improvement, project management, or a related field
• Multifamily property management, affordable housing, real estate, or other multi-site operational experience.
• Strong financial acumen and demonstrated ability to read and interpret financial statements, analyze revenue and expense performance, and connect financial results to operational activity.
• Experience with Yardi Voyager and related property management systems.
• Experience with Power BI or comparable business intelligence and data visualization tools.
• Advanced Excel skills and demonstrated experience analyzing complex financial and operational data.
• Experience developing or working with operational reporting, KPIs, dashboards, or performance measurement tools.
• Demonstrated analytical, critical-thinking, root-cause analysis, and problem-solving capabilities.
• Experience participating in or leading projects and process-improvement initiatives.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to translate analysis into clear findings and recommendations.
• Strong organization, ownership, accountability, and follow-through.
• Ability to work independently while collaborating effectively across functions and levels of the organization.
• Ability and willingness to travel throughout the portfolio as needed.

Preferred

• Experience with Lean, Six Sigma, continuous improvement, process mapping, or comparable process-improvement methodologies.
• Formal project management experience, training, or certification.
• Experience supporting property-level budgeting, forecasting, reforecasting, or financial performance analysis.
• Experience conducting operational audits, quality reviews, or post-implementation assessments.

Core Competencies

Financial Acumen - Understands financial performance and effectively connects operational activities and decisions to financial outcomes.

Analytical & Critical Thinking - Evaluates information objectively, identifies patterns, challenges assumptions, and digs beneath surface-level results.

Operational Excellence - Understands how processes work in practice and identifies opportunities to improve consistency, efficiency, accountability, and execution.

Root Cause Analysis & Problem Solving - Determines why an issue is occurring and distinguishes between process, system, training, execution, and other contributing factors.

Process Improvement - Identifies opportunities, develops solutions, supports implementation, and measures whether improvements achieved the intended outcome.

Project Management - Organizes work, coordinates stakeholders, tracks deliverables and risks, and drives assigned initiatives through completion.

Systems & Data Orientation - Uses systems, data, reporting, and business intelligence to improve visibility and decision-making.

Influence Without Authority - Builds credibility and helps drive action across departments through analysis, communication, collaboration, and sound judgment.

Communication - Translates complex operational and financial information into clear, actionable findings and recommendations.

Ownership & Follow-Through - Takes responsibility for assigned work, proactively identifies issues, and follows initiatives and corrective actions through resolution.

Success in the Role

Success in this role will be demonstrated by the Senior Analyst's ability to provide leadership with stronger insight into operational and financial performance, identify meaningful trends and root causes, improve the quality and usability of reporting, contribute to stronger and more consistent business processes, and successfully move defined improvements and projects from analysis through implementation.

The Senior Analyst should help the organization move beyond simply identifying that something is not working to understanding why it is happening, what the financial or operational impact is, what should change, and whether the solution produced the intended result.