Senior Data Analyst

Salary: £47k to £51k

Working pattern: Permanent, full-time (flexible working may be considered)

Location: Edinburgh / Glasgow

Closing date: 12 January 2020 at midnight

Make a difference at Audit Scotland by managing our data analytics team

We’re Scotland’s public sector auditor, responsible for ensuring that the Scottish Government and other public sector bodies are held to account for the proper, efficient and effective use of public money. We employ around 300 professionals from different backgrounds who believe that public money should be spent wisely. We know our important work makes a real difference to the lives of Scotland’s people and you’ll play a key role leading and developing our data analytics work to provide our auditors, audited bodies and the Scottish Parliament with better insights.

The last two years have seen unprecedented change in Scotland, the UK and internationally, and continuing pressures on public services. With more change to come and a fair amount of uncertainty, public audit has never been more important. New and increasing audit responsibilities mean we need to grow, making sure we have the capacity to deliver exceptional work. The volume and complexity of the data we use to inform our work is also increasing. This means we are changing the ways in which we work, with lots of opportunities for staff to develop new skills and get involved in new areas of work.

We are excited to be recruiting a permanent Senior Data Analyst to manage and develop our digital auditing strategy to help support and deliver our audit work.

How you can help us …

We are looking for a talented, experienced professional who thrives on making a difference and is passionate about building the capacity needed to deliver our digital ambitions.

As a Senior Data Analyst, you will work closely with colleagues from across the organisation to develop our vision for digital audit and implement an agreed approach, to help ensure Audit Scotland is ready for a digital future.

This is challenging and high-profile work, for which you need strong judgement, project management, and influencing skills.

You will have lead responsibility for understanding what data analytics solutions and skills Audit Scotland currently has and uses and help determine what we will need in the future. You will also be responsible for developing and implementing a programme of activity. You will assess how we currently extract, analyse and visualise data and help refine and develop new approaches to ensure we continue to provide valuable insights.

You will help to grow and oversee a new digital audit team and agree its medium-term work programme and strategy.

The role is within our Performance Audit and Best Value business group, but you will deliver and provide cross-organisation data analytics projects and support. You will be based in one of our well-located offices in Edinburgh or Glasgow.

More about you …

Audit Scotland colleagues are increasingly drawn from staff with a range of backgrounds and experiences. This makes sure that we can combine the very best expertise across a range of disciplines. We also place a real emphasis on effective people management, enabling and engaging individuals and teams to make a great contribution.

We want to hear from experienced professionals with experience in the following:

• Experience of developing and delivering a data analytics strategy and managing a small team.
• Strong programme and project management skills, with the ability to prioritise, coordinate and successfully deliver a number of data analytics projects for different business groups.
• Data analytics
• Significant experience of using R, python and other structured query languages, and other solutions such as IDEA to analyse data.
  
• Significant experience in statistical modelling, predictive analysis, developing algorithms, and supervised and unsupervised learning.
• Data management and engineering
• Significant experience in extracting and handling data from a variety of sources and systems such as SQL servers, Oracle, cloud storage and similar.
• Data visualisation and story telling
• Significant experience in developing dashboards, and visualisations using Tableau, PowerBI, Rshiny, R studio or similar.
• Strong ability to translate what users require into usable products, and the ability to train and support non data analysts in using these.

You will be educated to degree level or have demonstrable relevant experience. You will preferably have postgraduate training / qualification in a relevant data analysis discipline.

Of course, good hands-on experience of managing a data analytics strategy within a public sector organisation will be particularly valuable. We offer excellent opportunities for learning and development once you are here, if you can show us you have what it takes to be part of our audit team.

You will have excellent project management skills and experience of delivering high-quality work on time and within cost. You have well-developed analytical skills and the ability to convert your analysis into clear evidence-based judgements and recommendations for improvement.

You are an effective communicator who can draft clear and concise outputs, deal confidently with stakeholders, and maintain effective professional relationships. You know how to lead a team and help to bring out the best in your colleagues.

Continuing your career here brings fantastic benefits …

Working for Scotland’s public spending watchdog will be challenging. But it’s also extremely rewarding, and we have put in place a very competitive and attractive package. Don’t just take our word for it, we were awarded 2019 One to Watch status by the Sunday Times Best Companies Survey.

We offer a salary range of £47,000 - £51,000 for this position. If you are interested in part-time working or other flexible working patterns, we’d very much like to speak with you about that too.

You can find out more about us here: https://www.audit-scotland.gov.uk/careers

Application Information

Interested? Next steps …

We are keeping this nice and simple – click the apply button and ensure that you fully complete the application form.

The closing date for applications is midnight on 12 January 2020.

If you want to be part of how Audit Scotland makes a difference and we think you might have what we need, we’ll get together to talk about it. We’ve time over the week commencing 27 January 2020 for interviews. If successful, we’ll agree a package and start our journey together as we deliver on our vision to be a world-class audit organisation that improves the use of public money.