Description
EXL (NASDAQ: EXLS) is a global data and artificial intelligence ("AI") company that offers services and solutions to reinvent client business models, drive better outcomes and unlock growth with speed. EXL harnesses the power of data, AI, and deep industry knowledge to transform businesses, including the world's leading corporations in industries including insurance, healthcare, banking and financial services, media and retail, among others. EXL was founded in 1999 with the core values of innovation, collaboration, excellence, integrity and respect.
We are headquartered in New York and have more than 60,000 employees spanning six continents. For more information, visit
Role: SAS SME (Subject Matter Expert)
BU/Segment: Banking / Analytics
Location: Milton Keynes (Hybrid – 3–4 days per week onsite) or London-based (Hybrid – 4-5 days per week onsite)
Employment Type: 7-month contract (Umbrella Contractor, Inside IR35)
We are seeking a highly experienced SAS Subject Matter Expert to provide technical leadership for a critical platform migration programme within a leading global bank.
The role will play a key part in the client's exit from Cloudera and the repointing of SAS platforms to AWS, with a focus on ensuring architectural robustness, migration feasibility, and successful delivery across multiple consuming teams.
This is a senior, hands-on role requiring deep SAS expertise combined with strong platforms architectural judgement and the ability to challenge and validate proposed approaches.
Key Responsibilities
Strategy
* Lead the definition of the current-state and target-state SAS architecture, aligned to AWS cloud principles.
* Define integration patterns between SAS and AWS services (e.g. S3, Redshift, Glue, IAM, KMS).
Migration & Workload Repointing
* Assess existing SAS workloads (ETL, models, analytics, reporting) and determine optimal migration and placement strategies.
* Drive the repointing of SAS consumers from Cloudera to AWS, managing dependencies and technical risks.
* Provide guidance on code compatibility, refactoring, feature parity, and modernisation opportunities.
Security, Compliance & Governance
* Work closely with security, risk, and compliance teams to validate designs and approvals.
Performance & Scalability
* Ensure solutions are scalable, resilient, and capable of supporting high-volume risk and analytics use cases.
Stakeholder & Technical Leadership
* Act as the technical authority for SAS-related decisions across the programme.
* Collaborate with enterprise architects, data engineers, cloud architects, and business stakeholders.
* Challenge assumptions, validate plans, and provide clear, pragmatic technical direction.
Required Skills & Experience
* 10+ years' experience working with SAS platforms, including SAS 9 / SAS Viya.
* Strong expertise in SAS architecture, including CAS, Visual Analytics, Model Manager, and analytics workloads.
* Proven experience delivering large-scale SAS migrations, cloud transitions, or platform repointing initiatives.
* Expert knowledge of AWS services and cloud-based data architectures.
* Solid understanding of banking regulatory and security requirements.
* Strong communication and stakeholder management skills, with the confidence to operate as a senior SME.
* Ability to balance strategic architectural thinking with hands-on delivery and issue resolution.
To be considered for this role, you must already be eligible to work in the United Kingdom.