Dear Hiring Team,

I hope my write-up finds you well as I substantiate my candidacy summarising my accomplishments (detailed achievements are quantified in the resume, hence please refer the PDF resume for more detail)

I am a solution-driven professional with ~12.5 years of comprehensive experience in Process Improvement, Innovation, Strategy & Transformation, Business Analysis, Data Analytics, Agile Projects and Change Management across the FinTech Industry; I have held multiple positions where I have effectively used technology to address challenging business problems, provided solutions to complex business needs, planning, and designing business processes. My career journey has been marked by teamwork, stewardship, innovation, stakeholder & people management, managing & mentoring juniors and delivering impactful technology solutions.

Currently, I am associated with Barclays Investment Bank as Senior AVP, Business Analyst – Finance Strategy & Transformation. Since my joining in Feb 2020, I have consistently been Top-rated in my team. I was a key player in Strategic Initiatives and Process Simplification / Standardisation which brought about enterprise-wide Change in the Investment Bank’s System Architecture.

There are several instances wherein, I proactively went outside of my roles, and got involved in designing intelligent efficient systems, highlighting a few below:

• I recently had joined “Finance Innovation Team” which specialized in AI/ML, proposed multiple use cases and made efforts to introduce AI/ML to promote efficiency and innovations thereby making the existing systems intuitive and more intelligent. (One such use case we have developed and is under implementation is mentioned in the CV).
• In one of my earlier roles too as a Lead BA for BNY Mellon’s American Depository Receipts, I proposed similar use case of building an Intelligent, Intuitive BI tool for BNY Mellon’s DR businesses.
• Recalling another earlier role, as a Product Portfolio Manager for Frshly(Owl Tech Pvt Ltd) a startup, I developed a Forecasting Model which improved by 10% using Analytics (sales ratio and reduced Food wastage (details mentioned in my resume).

With this continued appetite for AIML and analytics, within Barclays, I took the entrance test, got shortlisted & trained via “Women in Machine Learning using Python”, a 3-month intensive program, conducted by Barclays in partnership with Coursera & IBM.  

In multiple roles, I have honed my programming skills and got trained in BI tools Hypercube, Python, drove Process Improvements & brought in Efficiency through real-time applications of these tools. This eliminated several man-hours and human errors through automation. As member of “Barclays – PC Innovation Lab” conducted series of knowledge sharing sessions for Finance teams on these tools, explaining their significance & encouraging them to utilize these tools for their regular BAU deliverables. This initiative was widely welcomed, and hence many important existing controls & processes were not only automated but were also standardized & centrally managed, reducing many man-hours spent on NVAs (Non-Value Add activities)

Having worked in several projects, I possess sound knowledge in AI/ML Techniques, Agile & SDLC projects, requirements, user stories, JIRA, Confluence etc which makes me adept at overseeing projects from conceptualisation to completion.

Hence, if given a opportunity, I will add value to your company by bringing a unique blend of skills both Business-specific Qualitative skills like Business Analysis, Innovation & Process Improvements, Analytics, AIML as well as Programming skills with tools like Hypercube, SQL, Python, C/C++, VSCode, Advanced Excel Macros – VBA. Thanks for reading through my cover letter and resume.

I am eagerly looking forward to discussing the prospects of meeting your hiring demands with my skills & competencies.

Regards & Sincere Thanks,

Sanjana Sivakumar