The organisation is a major Belgian insurance IT organisation responsible for life insurance administration systems; the IS Life teams build and maintain back-end COBOL Microfocus applications and SQL Server databases used for policy subscription, portfolio management and calculation engines. This role exists to convert high-level business requirements into robust IT solutions, combining functional analysis, COBOL Microfocus knowledge and SQL query work across multiple concurrent projects.
The mission
The work sits inside a life-insurance applications domain that supports policy subscription, tariff and fund calculations, daily premiums and claims processing. The landscape is a mixed stack: backend batch and online services in COBOL Microfocus with SQL Server databases, front-end and printing components owned by separate teams, and regular production monitoring to ensure platform stability. Your designs will affect systems that handle large contract portfolios and daily money-in/money-out flows.
On a day-to-day basis you will take high-level requirements from business stakeholders, produce functional designs that cover user interfaces, business logic and database impacts, and define a test approach for each delivery. You will follow implementation, review source code when necessary, write SQL queries on demand, coordinate technical designers and developers, and liaise with the IS Project Manager to agree scope and milestones. Expect to contribute to two to three projects in parallel and to step into production incident coordination when needed.
Your responsibilities
- Translate business needs into structured IT solutions that include UI behaviour, business rules and database changes, delivering clear functional specifications.
- Define and validate functional integration and acceptance tests, and verify delivered features before release to users.
- Coordinate implementation with technical designers and developers, ensuring functional intent is preserved in code and batch processing.
- Investigate and drive remediation for production incidents, liaising between business, operations and development teams.
- Produce SQL queries and review COBOL Microfocus source fragments to validate technical feasibility and impact.
- Report progress and risks to the IS Project Manager and support project planning and delivery milestones.
Your profile
Essential skills
- Senior functional analyst experience, 5+ years in IT functional roles, ideally within insurance or banking.
- Strong functional analysis and experience as a lead functional analyst on large-scale projects.
- Hands-on understanding of COBOL Microfocus source code and SQL Server, able to write and optimise SQL queries.
- Proven experience with application development for administrative systems and defining functional integration tests.
- Clear communicator who can work with business stakeholders, testers and technical teams, and who can prioritise multiple deliveries.
Preferred skills
- Experience with web client/server front-ends backed by Microfocus COBOL and SQL Server.
- Familiarity with batch process design and operations.
- Practical experience in Cobol Microfocus programming or .NET components that integrate with the MF back-end.
Languages
- English, B1
- Dutch, B2
- French, B2
Education
- Master or engineering degree in IT or a scientific domain, or a Bachelor with a minimum of 5 years' relevant experience.