Senior Bilingual IT Business Analyst (English and Japanese) – Industrial AI Enablement
Hitachi
Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
Contract
Competitive
OfficeSenior
Function
Cloud & Data EngineeringWe’re Hitachi Digital Services, a global digital solutions and transformation business with a bold vision of our world’s potential. We’re people-centric and here to power good. Every day, we future-proof urban spaces, conserve natural resources, protect rainforests, and save lives. This is a world where innovation, technology, and deep expertise come together to take our company and customers from what’s now to what’s next. We make it happen through the power of acceleration.
Imagine the sheer breadth of talent it takes to bring a better tomorrow closer to today. We don’t expect you to ‘fit’ every requirement – your life experience, character, perspective, and passion for achieving great things in the world are equally as important to us.
We are seeking a Senior Bilingual (English and Japanese) IT Business Analyst with experience in industrial/technical domains (e.g., manufacturing, industrial operations, OT/IT, IIoT) to support AI-enabled transformation initiatives in Japan.
This role is customer-facing and will work closely with Japanese customers to understand current operations, identify opportunities where AI can be introduced, and translate business needs into high-quality technical requirements documentation. Your primary output will be clear, structured, and testable requirements artifacts consumed by AI development teams to design and build solutions, in partnership with the Product Owner in Japan.
Key Responsibilities
1) Customer Discovery & Operational Understanding (Japan)
Lead and facilitate customer-facing workshops and interviews in Japanese and English to understand:
Current operational processes, systems, pain points, and constraints
Target outcomes and measurable success criteria for AI adoption
Data sources, process exceptions, and real-world operational behavior
Observe/validate workflows on-site or remotely and capture “as-is” processes, including edge cases and operational dependencies.
Build trusted relationships with customer stakeholders across business, operations, engineering, IT, and leadership.
2) Requirements Elicitation, Analysis & Documentation (Primary Deliverable)
Convert customer needs into technical, structured requirements suitable for AI engineering teams, including:
Functional requirements, non-functional requirements (NFRs), and constraints
Data requirements (sources, quality, labels, lineage, access, refresh rate, retention, privacy)
Integration requirements (OT/IT systems, APIs, data pipelines, edge/cloud)
AI/ML-specific requirements (use case definition, ground truth, evaluation criteria, inference latency, retraining triggers)
Produce and maintain high-quality artifacts such as:
Business Requirements Document (BRD) / Product Requirements
User stories & acceptance criteria (e.g., INVEST), prioritized backlog
Process maps (BPMN), context diagrams, system interaction diagrams
Requirements traceability matrix, glossary, assumptions & dependencies
Ensure documentation is clear, testable, unambiguous, and aligned across stakeholders.
3) Bridge Between Customer, AI Development, and Product (Japan)
Act as the interface between:
Japanese customer stakeholders
AI development teams (data science, ML engineering, software engineering)
Japan-based Product Owner and delivery stakeholders
Translate requirements across business/technical contexts and ensure shared understanding of scope, priorities, and constraints.
Support sprint planning, backlog refinement, scope management, and change control.
4) Delivery Support & Quality Assurance
Support solution validation by defining acceptance criteria and participating in UAT planning.
Assist teams in clarifying requirements during build, ensuring outcomes match intent.
Identify risks early (data gaps, process readiness, integration complexity, stakeholder alignment) and propose mitigations.
Required Qualifications
Bilingual proficiency in Japanese and English (business-level and above).
Ability to run workshops and write professional documentation in both languages.
3–8+ years of experience as an IT Business Analyst, Technical BA, Systems Analyst, or similar role (adjust seniority).
Experience in industrial technical domains, such as:
Manufacturing/plant operations, OT/IT environments, industrial engineering
MES/SCADA/PLC, IIoT sensors, time-series data, maintenance/quality/production processes
Strong requirements writing capability: ability to translate ambiguous needs into structured, testable specifications.
Experience collaborating with cross-functional technical teams using Agile delivery practices.
Strong stakeholder management skills with experience in customer-facing roles in Japan.
Preferred / Nice-to-Have
Experience supporting AI/ML product delivery (even if not hands-on modeling).
Familiarity with AI solution lifecycle concepts: training vs inference, model monitoring, drift, evaluation metrics, retraining.
Experience working with data engineers on pipelines and data readiness for analytics/AI.
Knowledge of OT security, privacy, compliance, and data governance considerations in industrial environments.
Certifications such as CBAP/CCBA, PMI-PBA, Agile BA, Scrum, or equivalent.
Tools & Methods
Agile tools: Jira / Azure DevOps, Confluence, Backlog management
Documentation & modeling: BPMN/UML, Visio/Lucidchart/Miro
Requirements techniques: user stories, use cases, MoSCoW prioritization, story mapping
Data/technical understanding: APIs, databases, data pipelines, event/time-series data
Working Style & Travel
Based in Tokyo; occasional customer site visits within Japan may be required (frequency depends on project).
Operates effectively in a cross-cultural environment, balancing local customer expectations with global engineering execution.
#LI-VL1
We’re a global, team of innovators. Together, we harness engineering excellence and passion to co-create meaningful solutions to complex challenges. We turn organizations into >Fostering innovation through diverse perspectives
Hitachi is a global company operating across a wide range of industries and regions. One of the things that sets Hitachi apart is the diversity of our business and people, which drives our innovation and growth.
We are committed to building an inclusive culture based on mutual respect and merit-based systems. We believe that when people feel valued, heard, and safe to express themselves, they do their best work.
We help take care of your today and tomorrow with industry-leading benefits, support, and services that look after your holistic health and wellbeing. We’re also champions of life balance and offer flexible arrangements that work for you (role and location dependent). We’re always looking for new ways of working that bring out our best, which leads to unexpected ideas. So here, you’ll experience a sense of belonging, and discover autonomy, freedom, and ownership as you work alongside talented people you enjoy sharing knowledge with.
We’re proud to say we’re an equal opportunity employer and welcome all applicants for employment without attention to race, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran, age, disability status or any other protected characteristic. Should you need reasonable accommodations during the recruitment process, please let us know so that we can do our best to set you up for success.