Data Scientist - 90394593 - Washington

****PLEASE NOTE: ****

Amtrak OIG is not a Federal agency. Our employment opportunities are not federal jobs.

Join with the Inspector General to help make America’s railroad operate more efficiently and effectively. Our team provides independent oversight of Amtrak’s programs and operations and works diligently to prevent and detect fraud, waste, and abuse by Amtrak employees, contractors, or vendors. This work not only helps to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of Amtrak, but it also informs decision-making by Amtrak’s Board of Directors, Amtrak management, and Congress. We employ a diverse team of auditors, special agents, analysts, forensic examiners, lawyers, and support staff to complete our exciting mission. Join us as we continue toward our goal of building a model OIG centered on independence, teamwork, diversity, work-life balance, and oversight that makes a difference!

SUMMARY OF DUTIES:

The Data Scientist collects, prepares and analyzes data to help the OIG conduct audits and investigations of Amtrak (the company) programs and operations, in accordance with lawful standards. The incumbent will support complex audits and sensitive criminal, civil, and administrative investigations with data analytics strategies that help assess the economy, efficiency, and effectiveness of Amtrak programs and operations and help identify potential fraud, waste, and abuse. Evidence the incumbent develops may also be used by OIG investigators for civil or criminal accountability in conjunction with relevant United States Attorney Offices. The incumbent will work with OIG Data Analysts, Data Engineers, and company resources to access data, learn related business processes, identify relevant internal controls, ensure completeness and accuracy of the data, and generate business insights using advanced data analytics techniques such as machine learning and artificial intelligence.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS:

• Works independently without significant supervisory guidance and takes the lead, as needed, in collecting, preparing, and analyzing data.
• Takes direction from the Director or Senior Director of Data Analytics to prioritize requests for data analyses and ensures compliance with OIG and company policies, standard operating procedures, and best practices.
• Learns company systems and related business processes and identifies internal controls relevant to the analytic objective. Becomes a subject matter expert on some business areas such as safety and security, contract management, procurement practices, vendor management, finance, human resources, payroll, public corruption, revenue management, and healthcare.
• Works with auditors and investigators, learns their objectives, identifies data relevant to their objectives, brainstorms analytic ideas to help auditors and investigators use available data elements from different systems, and consults them on the quality and reliability of the data and effective ways to analyze them for significant insights.
• Proposes expert data analytic strategies using available tools to identify trends or solve business problems in support of complex audits and investigations in various business areas.
• Helps identify potential fraud, waste and abuse, and provides input and insight to further investigations.
• Builds advanced data analytics tests and models to generate meaningful insights and identifies opportunities to innovatively use available data to identify signals and patterns to help auditors and investigators make decisions.
• Independently checks own work to ensure that the evidence the data analytics generate is free of errors and consistent with established guidelines and processes before providing results to auditors and investigators.
• Ensures analytic results are reliable, sufficient, and relevant such that they can support audit findings and recommendations or the investigative evidence the OIG presents to the United States Attorney’s office.
• Creates effective data visualizations that provide business insights, illustrate risk areas, and can be periodically updated using automation.
• Performs quality assurance reviews of others’ work and prepares own reports to a high degree of excellence.
• Develops productive working relationships with internal and external parties.  Interfaces with various levels of the organization including Senior Management, maintains communication with system and data owners, and monitors changes to the sources system that impact OIG’s access to the data and downstream analyses and reports.
• Works with Data Engineer and OIG IT Mission Support team to implement best security practices for data governance and monitor compliance with OIG and company policies in securing sensitive and non-sensitive data.
• Supports Data Engineer in the collection of data from internal and external systems, and ensures that the data are complete, free of corruption and errors, and sufficient and relevant to the data analytic objective.
• Independently prepares, cleans, normalizes, and validates data for utmost integrity before usage, and assists with ad-hoc data analysis requests, as needed.
• Independently builds automated data extraction routines for complex and large data sets to optimize data storage and delivery.
• Helps maintain and optimize data collection and preparation methods to ensure data are available, accurate, and reliable.
• Collaborates with other Data Analysts, Data Engineers, Auditors, and Criminal Investigators in planning and gathering digital evidence.
• Keeps management abreast of project progress and any matters that may affect timely completion of engagements.
• Meets regularly with team to provide work status, discuss progress and obstacles, and recommend solutions to technical issues. Ensures work, information, ideas, and technology flow freely.
• Helps prepare reports, spreadsheets, and detailed exhibits that can be integrated into reports, briefings, and other related products.
• Helps develop briefings, messages, reports, testimonies, and fact sheets to ensure data are clear and accurate.
• Assists the OIG’s Office of Counsel in preparing for trials, and testifies at hearings and criminal trials, when necessary.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Data Science, Data Analytics, Statistics, Computer Science, Information Systems, or other fields related to data analysis, machine learning, business information management, or forensic accounting.
• 5+ years of experience performing statistical analysis using data analytics software packages, such as Alteryx, ACL, Python, R, and other visualization software such as Tableau or Microsoft Power BI.
• 3+ years of experience developing analytical solutions using tools such as AWS Glue, S3, Redshift, Athena, and APIs for data extract, transform, and load (ETL), storage, and data analysis.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS: 

• Master’s Degree in Data Science, Data Analytics, Statistics, Computer Science, Information Systems, or other fields related to data analysis, machine learning, artificial intelligence, business information management, or forensic accounting.
• Advanced proficiency performing statistical analysis using data analytics software packages, such as Alteryx, ACL, Python, R, and other visualization software such as Tableau or Microsoft Power BI.
• Advanced proficiency developing analytical solutions using tools such as AWS Glue, S3, Redshift, Athena, and APIs for data ETL, storage, and data analysis.
• Strong analytic skills related to working with unstructured datasets.
• Knowledge of working with JSON format data, including parsing and stringifying.
• Knowledge of federal criminal and civil law, practice, and procedure.
• Investigative experience with an emphasis on complex white-collar crimes involving contracts, procurement, vendors, finance, human resources, public corruption, revenue, and health care.
• Broad knowledge of the laws, practices, and procedures of federal Offices of Inspector General.
• Experience testifying in criminal, civil, or administrative trials and hearings or presenting complex investigative findings to executive decision-makers.
• Experience with forensic auditing techniques involving digital media.
• Familiarity with passenger rail or transportation operations.

COMPENSATION: 

The hiring salary range the Data Scientist is $112,210 to $145,400.  This is the starting salary range and does not reflect the full salary range of the position. Pay is based on several factors including but not limited to education, work experience, certifications, internal equity, etc.  In addition to your salary, Amtrak OIG offers a benefit package that includes health, dental, and vision plans; health savings accounts; wellness programs; flexible spending accounts; 401K retirement plan with employer match; life insurance; short and long term disability insurance; paid time off; back-up care; adoption assistance; surrogacy assistance; reimbursement of education expenses; Public Service Loan Forgiveness eligibility; Railroad Retirement sickness and retirement benefits; and rail pass privileges. Learn more about our benefits offerings here.

Requisition ID: 164625

Location:  Washington D.C.

Work Arrangement:  Onsite

Relocation: No

Travel:  Yes – 10%

You power our progress through your performance.
 

We want your work at Amtrak to be more than a job. We want your career at Amtrak to be a fulfilling experience where you find challenging work, rewarding opportunities, respect among colleagues, and attractive compensation. Amtrak maintains a culture that values high performance and recognizes individual employee contributions. 

Amtrak is committed to a safe workplace free of drugs and alcohol. All Amtrak positions requires a pre-employment background check that includes prior employment verification, a criminal history check and a pre-employment drug screen. 

Candidates who test positive for marijuana will be disqualified, regardless of any state or local statute, ordinance, regulation, or other law that legalizes or decriminalizes the use or possession of marijuana, whether for medical, recreational, or other use. Amtrak's pre-employment drug testing program is administered in accordance with DOT regulations and applicable law.  

In accordance with DOT regulations (49 CFR § 40.25), Amtrak is required to obtain prior drug and alcohol testing records for applicants/employees intending to perform safety sensitive duties for covered Department of Transportation positions. If an applicant/employee refuses to provide written consent for Amtrak to obtain these records, the individual will not be permitted to perform safety-sensitive functions.

In accordance with federal law governing security checks of covered individuals for providers of public transportation (Title 6 U.S.C. §1143), Amtrak is required to screen applicants for any permanent or interim disqualifying criminal offenses. 

Note that any education requirement listed above may be deemed satisfied if you have an equivalent combination of education, training and experience.

Amtrak is an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race/color, to include traits historically associated with race, including but not limited to, hair texture and hairstyles such as braids, locks and twists, religion, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth and related conditions, such as lactation), national origin/ethnicity, disability (intellectual, mental and physical), veteran status, marital status, ancestry, sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression, genetic information, citizenship or any other personal characteristics protected by law.