Program Analyst Three Jobs in Illinois (NOW HIRING)

Woodward is committed to creating a great workplace for all team members. Our company and its members are committed to acting with integrity, being respectful and accountable to one another, and staying humble and driven, while maintaining the highest professional and ethical standards.

We are steadfastly committed to attracting the best talent across our communities creating a rewarding workplace. Together we are fulfilling our purpose to design and deliver energy control solutions our partners count on to power a clean future.

Woodward supports our members' wellbeing and regularly benchmarks with other companies in our industry to offer an extensive Total Reward package for this position. Salary will be determined by the applicant's education, experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities, as well as internal equity and alignment with market data.

• Estimated annual base pay:

  • Level III: $95,000(minimum) - $123,000(midpoint) - $152,000(maximum)

  • Level IV: $113,000(minimum) - $147,000(midpoint) - $181,000(maximum)

All levels are eligible for the following:

• All members included in annual cash bonus opportunity.

• 401(k) match (4.5%)

• Annual Woodward stock contribution (5%)

• Tuition reimbursement and Training/Professional Development opportunities for all members

• 12 paid holidays, including floating holidays.

• Industry leading medical, dental, and vision Insurance upon date of hire

• Vacation / Sick Time / Vacation Buy-up / Short Term Disability / Bereavement leave.

• Paid parental leave.

• Adoption Assistance

• Employee Assistance Program, including mental health benefits.

• Member Life & AD&D / Long Term Disability / Member Optional Life

• Member referral bonus

• Spouse / Child Optional Life / Optional AD&D / Healthcare and Dependent Care Flexible Spending

• Voluntary benefits, including:

• Home / Auto Insurance discounts

• Whole Life Insurance / Critical Illness Insurance / Legal Assistance / Military Leave

Business Analyst III - AI & Digital Transformation

The Business Analyst III is the strategic link between an assigned business function and the enterprise Data, Analytics, and IT teams. Embedded with functional leadership, this role identifies high-value opportunities for data, analytics, and AI; shapes ambiguous business needs into structured solutions; and helps prioritize and sequence the work in partnership with technical teams. The role reports to and works closely with the Aerospace Business Intelligence and Analytics Leader on direction, framing, and approach.

Key Responsibilities:

• Functional Partnership & Opportunity Identification: Embed with the assigned function; build deep, trust-based relationships with functional leaders; develop a working understanding of their processes, pain points, and priorities; identify and qualify opportunities where data, analytics, and AI can deliver measurable business value.

• Opportunity Prioritization & Recommendation: Continuously gather, evaluate, and prioritize the analytics and AI opportunities surfaced by the function. Take the broad set of inbound requests, apply analytical judgment to narrow them to a short list of the highest-value candidates, and present recommendations to functional leadership and the direct leader for final selection. Work closely with the direct leader on framing, sequencing, and trade-off decisions.

• Solution Shaping & Specification: Translate the prioritized opportunities into written specifications that data scientists, analysts, and IT partners can execute against. Each specification defines the business problem, the target outcome, measurable success criteria, scope boundaries, and acceptance criteria for handoff. Partner with technical teams to evaluate approach options and select the right one.

• End-to-End Execution Ownership: Own initiatives from concept through implementation and adoption; manage scope, sequencing, and trade-offs across the lifecycle; remove blockers, drive decisions, and hold the line on priorities; ensure pilots advance to production where the business case justifies it.

• Business Case & ROI Development: Build the business cases that justify investment in new initiatives, including value estimation, cost projection, and payback analysis; track realized value post-implementation and feed lessons learned back into the roadmap.

• Stakeholder Influence & Change Leadership: Influence senior functional leaders on direction, priorities, and trade-offs; lead change management efforts that drive adoption of new tools and ways of working; communicate progress, risks, and decisions clearly to both functional and technical audiences.

• Cross-Functional Coordination: Work across the Data and Analytics organization, IT, and the assigned function to align priorities, dependencies, and delivery timelines; partner with peers covering other functions to share patterns and avoid duplication.

Key Skills:

• Process Depth: Strong working knowledge of how a complex business function operates end-to-end; ability to map current-state processes, identify root causes of inefficiency, and design future-state workflows. Manufacturing, engineering, or operations process knowledge is strongly preferred.

• Strategic Problem-Solving: Comfort operating in ambiguity; ability to take a vague business problem and shape it into a structured, solvable initiative with a clear value hypothesis.

• Ownership Mindset: Track record of owning initiatives end-to-end and driving them to completion, including making the hard prioritization and scope calls and saying no when necessary.

• Solution Specification: Ability to translate a selected opportunity into a written specification that the technical team can build against. A good specification clearly states the business problem, the target outcome, what success looks like in measurable terms, what is in and out of scope, and the conditions for accepting the finished solution. The goal is to give the technical team enough clarity to build the right thing, without prescribing how they build it.

• AI & Machine Learning Judgment: Practical understanding of the current AI and ML landscape - predictive modeling, classification, optimization, large language models, and generative AI - including realistic awareness of what these technologies do well, where they fall short, and what they require to succeed (data quality, governance, change management). Able to qualify AI opportunities and call out hype before it becomes wasted investment.

• Vendor & Build-Versus-Buy Evaluation: Experience evaluating vendor offerings, leading or contributing to RFP and proof-of-concept processes, and bringing informed judgment to build-versus-buy and integration trade-off decisions. Familiarity with data governance, security, and compliance considerations relevant to enterprise and regulated environments. Hands-on technical depth is not required; informed judgment is.

• Business Case Construction: Comfort building ROI cases, payback analyses, and investment justifications that hold up to finance and senior leadership scrutiny.

• Stakeholder Influence: Ability to build trust quickly with senior functional leaders and to influence direction without formal authority. Strong written and verbal communication for executive audiences.

• Delivery Discipline: Ability to balance long-range roadmap thinking with near-term execution, and to coordinate effectively with the technical and delivery teams who build the solutions.

• Change Leadership: Experience driving adoption of new tools, processes, and ways of working across teams; understanding that the work is not done when the solution ships.

Successful Candidates Will Typically Have:

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Business, Analytics, or a related field required. Advanced degrees (MBA or Master's in Analytics, Data Science, or related field) are preferred.

• A minimum of 5 years of professional experience, including demonstrated success contributing to or leading complex initiatives end-to-end. Experience partnering with business functions to shape problems into delivered solutions, support business case development, and engage senior stakeholders. Experience in manufacturing, engineering, or aerospace environments is strongly preferred. Familiarity with modern data, analytics, and AI capabilities is preferred; hands-on technical depth is not required.

Business Analyst IV - AI & Digital Transformation

The Senior Business Analyst is the strategic link between an assigned business function and the enterprise Data, Analytics, and IT teams. Embedded with functional leadership, this role identifies high-value opportunities for data, analytics, and AI; shapes ambiguous business needs into structured solutions; and helps prioritize and sequence the work in partnership with technical teams. The role reports to and works closely with the Aerospace Business Intelligence and Analytics Leader on direction, framing, and approach.

Key Responsibilities:

• Functional Partnership & Opportunity Identification: Anchor the analytics and AI partnership with the assigned function; develop and maintain trusted relationships with senior functional leaders; bring deep understanding of the function's processes, strategic priorities, and operating constraints to opportunity identification; lead the surfacing and qualification of the highest-value opportunities.

• Opportunity Prioritization & Recommendation: Lead the prioritization process for the function's analytics and AI portfolio; bring cross-functional context and strategic perspective to trade-off conversations; narrow the broad set of inbound requests to a short list of the highest-value candidates and present recommendations to functional leadership and the direct leader for final selection; coach more junior team members on opportunity qualification and evaluation.

• Solution Shaping & Specification: Lead specification work for the most complex and ambiguous opportunities on the team; ensure each specification clearly defines the business problem, the target outcome, measurable success criteria, scope boundaries, and acceptance criteria for handoff; partner with technical teams on approach selection and trade-off analysis; raise the bar on specification quality across the team and coach others on what good looks like.

• End-to-End Execution Ownership: Own the function's most strategic initiatives end-to-end; manage scope, sequencing, and trade-offs across a portfolio of work; remove blockers, drive decisions across senior stakeholders, and hold the line on priorities; ensure initiatives advance from pilot to enterprise scale where the business case justifies it.

• Business Case & ROI Development: Build the business cases that justify significant investment, including initiatives that go to executive and finance review; lead value estimation, cost projection, and payback analysis on the highest-stakes opportunities; track realized value post-implementation and influence capital allocation conversations on behalf of the function.

• Stakeholder Influence & Change Leadership: Influence senior and executive functional leaders on direction, priorities, and trade-offs; lead enterprise-scale change management efforts that drive adoption of new tools and ways of working; serve as a visible voice for the function in cross-Aerospace governance and prioritization forums; communicate progress, risks, and decisions clearly to executive audiences.

• Cross-Functional Coordination: Shape patterns and standards across the Data and Analytics organization, IT, and the assigned function; align with peers covering other functions to share learnings and avoid duplication; mentor more junior Business Analysts on methodology and approach; contribute to the team's overall playbook.

Key Skills:

• Process Depth: Strong working knowledge of how a complex business function operates end-to-end; ability to map current-state processes, identify root causes of inefficiency, and design future-state workflows. Manufacturing, engineering, or operations process knowledge is strongly preferred.

• Strategic Problem-Solving: Comfort operating in ambiguity; ability to take a vague business problem and shape it into a structured, solvable initiative with a clear value hypothesis.

• Ownership Mindset: Track record of owning initiatives end-to-end and driving them to completion, including making the hard prioritization and scope calls and saying no when necessary.

• Solution Specification: Ability to translate a selected opportunity into a written specification that the technical team can build against. A good specification clearly states the business problem, the target outcome, what success looks like in measurable terms, what is in and out of scope, and the conditions for accepting the finished solution. The goal is to give the technical team enough clarity to build the right thing, without prescribing how they build it.

• AI & Machine Learning Judgment: Practical understanding of the current AI and ML landscape - predictive modeling, classification, optimization, large language models, and generative AI - including realistic awareness of what these technologies do well, where they fall short, and what they require to succeed (data quality, governance, change management). Able to qualify AI opportunities and call out hype before it becomes wasted investment.

• Vendor & Build-Versus-Buy Evaluation: Experience evaluating vendor offerings, leading or contributing to RFP and proof-of-concept processes, and bringing informed judgment to build-versus-buy and integration trade-off decisions. Familiarity with data governance, security, and compliance considerations relevant to enterprise and regulated environments. Hands-on technical depth is not required; informed judgment is.

• Business Case Construction: Comfort building ROI cases,...