Director of Data Analytics

• OSA Posting Number 2025-15
• SALARY RANGE (Grade 17) CSA225: $105,616.52/yr. -- $158,424.76/yr. (Commensurate with experience)

This position will be based out of the Boston, Lawrence, Brockton, Marlboro, or Chicopee OSA offices. Please indicate your geographical preference in office location when applying per the application instructions below.
The Office of State Auditor (OSA) serves as the chief accountability entity for the Massachusetts state government and its residents. OSA conducts audits of state entities and contractors to assess their performance and recommend improvements to enhance the effectiveness of government operations. In addition to ensuring that tax dollars are spent wisely, audits, reports, and investigations have also improved the performance of state governments. OSA has offices in Boston, Marlborough, Chicopee, and Brockton.

GENERAL STATEMENT OF DUTIES:
The Director of Data Analytics is the official responsible for the OSA Data Analytics Unit (DAU). The incumbent works closely across all OSA functions to ensure the delivery of timely, high-quality, reliable, and evidence-based insights that conform to the principles promulgated under the Generally Accepted Government Auditing Standards (GAGAS). The incumbent is also expected to exercise leadership in transformation, continually advancing DAU’s analytical capabilities and applying management best practices to shape a high-performing unit. Additionally, the incumbent must exhibit the ability to collaborate effectively and communicate persuasively.

• SUPERVISION RECEIVED:
• The Director of Data Analytics reports to the Chief Information Officer and may receive additional guidance from the Executive Deputy Auditor and his designees

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:
• Develop an operational charter for the DAU.
• Plan, assign, direct, prioritize, supervise, augment, and review the work of DAU personnel across audit engagements, non-audit engagements, and discretionary/investment projects.
• Engage with the pre-planning and planning teams to proactively maximize opportunities for DAU involvement and shape analytical scope.
• Identify Commonwealth, open, purchased, and administrative data resources relevant to serving the OSA mission and implement appropriate acquisition/sustainment strategies.
• Ensure TeamMate+ appropriately, granularly, and accurately reflects all assignments and activities of DAU in each audit engagement.
• Ensure data reliability assessments, analytical scripts, and other relevant engagement artifacts are clear, complete, logical, reflect best practices, and can withstand independent peer reviews.
• Establish a standardized intake and governance process for discretionary/investment projects that clearly capture opportunities, product ownership, sponsor, scope, success criteria, timeline, and associated risks.
• Provide weekly management reports to senior OSA leadership with operational metrics and narratives on project status, team capacity, blockers, and risks.
• Establish a plan for continuity of operations to strengthen organizational resilience.
• Exercise empathy and emotional intelligence in managing DAU staff while ensuring performance accountability.
• Set performance expectations, formalize quarterly touchpoints, and develop annual evaluations for all DAU staff.
• Engage proactively with OSA leadership and establish rapport across teams to reinforce the importance of evidence-based insights and data-driven evaluations.
• Expand DAU’s capacity for evidence-driven foresight through the application of predictive and prescriptive modeling, including the use of machine learning techniques. This duty includes determining training/upskilling needs for DAU and non-DAU staff.
• Modernize analytical tech stack and standard operating procedures (SOP) using Azure GCC cloud infrastructure and services.
• Identify opportunities to pilot automations that enhance efficiency and consistency.
• Collaborate with the Chief Information Officer and the Office of Information Technology to effectively and securely scale proof of concepts.
• Maintain professional compliance requirements for all DAU personnel (e.g., continuing professional education) and activities (e.g., privacy and legal).
• Support meeting OSA audit mandates and other organizational objectives.
• Other duties as assigned.

The Office of the State Auditor is committed to providing equal employment opportunities. Employment actions such as recruiting, hiring, training, and promoting individuals are based upon a policy of non-discrimination. Employment decisions and actions are made without regard to race, color, gender, religion, age, national origin, ancestry, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, disability, military status, genetic information, political affiliation, or veteran’s status.

• MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS:
• The successful candidate will possess and/or demonstrate:

Analytics Leadership
• Proficiency with common scripting languages (e.g., Python, R, SQL), open-source packages, visualization tools, and relational as well as non-relational data stores.
• Proficiency with exploratory data analyses and hypothesis ideation to support, refine, or augment researchable questions.
• Proficiency with data reliability assessment, Extract Transform Load (ETL), and data pipeline development.
• Expertise in working with structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data.
• Expertise in applying appropriate ad-hoc, descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, prescriptive, and ensemble techniques.
• Proficiency in feature engineering and dimension reduction techniques.
• Proficiency in evaluating analytical results for appropriate accuracy, precision, relevance, and errors.
• Ability to manage across the lifecycle and asynchronous execution of analytics projects.
• Experience in developing analytical artifacts capable of supporting reproducible results, including data reliability assessments, coding documentations, analyses of alternatives, and records of analyses.

General
• A master’s degree from an accredited institution in engineering, mathematics, statistics, data science, analytics, or a related technical discipline.
• Four to six years of progressive leadership experience in analytics.
• Ability to communicate ideas or positions persuasively, and effectively build rapport, consensus, and commitments from stakeholders.
• Demonstrate strong team-building experience.
• Ability to manage data engineers, data scientists, and data analysts.
• Ability to set challenging goals and drive towards results-oriented outcomes.

• PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS:
• Demonstrated experience and expertise in the following areas will also be important considerations:
• • Experience working with governmental data.
• • Experience working within Azure GCC cloud infrastructure.
• • Familiarity with the Generally Accepted Government Auditing Standards (GAGAS).

The Office of the State Auditor is committed to providing equal employment opportunities. Employment actions such as recruiting, hiring, training, and promoting individuals are based upon a policy of non-discrimination. Employment decisions and actions are made without regard to race, color, gender, religion, age, national origin, ancestry, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, disability, military status, genetic information, political affiliation, or veteran’s status.