Senior Research Analyst Job at Western Governors University in Salt Lake City, UT

If you're passionate about building a better future for individuals, communities, and our country-and you're committed to working hard to play your part in building that future-consider WGU as the next step in your career.

Driven by a mission to expand access to higher education through online, competency-based degree programs, WGU is also committed to being a great place to work for a diverse workforce of student-focused professionals. The university has pioneered a new way to learn in the 21st century, one that has received praise from academic, industry, government, and media leaders. Whatever your role, working for WGU gives you a part to play in helping students graduate, creating a better tomorrow for themselves and their families.

The Senior Research Analyst plays a critical role in WGU's culture of data driven continuous improvement. The successful candidate is curious, skeptical, technical, and possesses strong business acumen. An ideal candidate is also a continuous learner, working to improve their analytical tool kit and increase productivity. This Senior role is responsible for providing leadership across our Outreach Analytics team and the WGU organization to gain a deep understanding of the strategies, tactics, and goals of the data used to lead the organization.

The Senior Analyst is responsible for rigorous data analysis to help guide decision-making within the departments we service and across the university through various collaborations. They are expected to present findings clearly, concisely, and directed toward action. Overall, Research Analysts in Outreach Analytics support the data, research, and analysis needs of WGU to improve student outcomes. They will consult with business leaders about data needs and design, conduct, and report results of ad hoc research and analytical studies supporting a variety of non-academic departments at WGU, including Marketing, Enrollment, Regional Operations, and Student Support Services. The ideal candidate is comfortable using a range of analytic methods to answer university questions. Analysts will often need to be able to communicate results using automated reports that can be run on demand in Tableau, Adobe Analytics, and ServiceNow as well as in written and presentation form.

In addition, this position will need to be able to work with internal customers to understand requirements and be able to design user stories. The analyst will use business user stories to define data acquisition requirements and develop, deploy, manage and revise reports and analysis supporting the user stories.

This is a technical role that requires extracting and manipulating data using SQL and performing analysis on a variety of platforms.

Essential Functions and Responsibilities:

• Extract and manipulate data using SQL. Develop database objects

• Code and perform unit testing of developed code

• Proficient analytical skill set and experience with creating, cleaning, and analyzing large data sets

• Develop and deploy complex reports and dashboards

• Create data-informed processes to resolve business problems and use analytical methods to produce actionable insights

• Manage change requests and troubleshoot data issues

• Complete root cause analysis on KPIs

• Collaborate in the forecasting of key business drivers and KPIs

• Present findings to technical and non-technical audiences, including executive staff

• Design process and business audits for data quality

• Identifies, investigates, and/or solves complex data issues, contributing to the accuracy, completeness, consistency, timeliness, and validity of WGU's data.

• Collaborates with Data Engineering and other data & analytics partners to define standards and best practices that increase data quality across WGU.

• Ability to attend to detail, manage multiple tasks and meet deadlines

• Work closely and communicate effectively with business users and stakeholders. Requirements gathering and documentation from stakeholders

• Responsibility to Lead or Manage an IR-supported initiative or project at the enterprise-wide level

• Meet and Consult with the project stakeholders to determine the scope, requirements, final product, and if needed, ongoing maintenance support

• Facilitate needs analysis and IR resource allocation of project

• Communicate project statuses and activities to IR and WGU leadership

• Represent Institutional Research at meetings and other coordinating events to provide IR insights, perspective, and results

• Assist, train, and guide less experienced members of the team in technical processes

• Sets and manages expectations in projects of medium/high complexity, ensuring realistic goal-setting and effective communication about scope, timelines, outcomes, and dependencies.

• Answers complex business questions requiring extensive knowledge of WGU's data assets across several domains and departments.

• Creates and organizes information about processes, projects, operations, and/or data assets, making it accessible in ways that increase WGU's knowledge and efficiency.

• Writes and interprets technical documentation (e.g. Entity-Relationship, Conceptual, Logical, and Physical data models).

• Contributes actively to developing WGU's data management platforms (e.g. data dictionaries, catalogs, etc.).

• Performs other related duties as assigned.

• continuous, data-driven

• Advanced Excel

• Advanced SQL skills

• Understanding of descriptive and inferential statistics and predictive modeling

• Understanding of time-series forecasting

• Proficiency in visual display of data

• Experience developing and producing reporting using Tableau, Power BI, or similar applications

• Experience developing and producing reporting within systems like Salesforce, ServiceNow, or similar applications

• Experience with working with different file formats such as JSON, XML, and CSV

• Experience in data validation and testing to analyze, debug and fix issues

• Knowledge of qualitative research analysis, methodologies and best practices

• Experience in KPI development and application

• Expertise in understanding, manipulating and querying large data sets with complex file structures

• Experience and success with creative problem solvin,g particularly with respect to innovative data applications

• Ability to bridge communication and action between business user stories and technical requirements

• Ability to explain complex data and research issues in a professional manner with technical and non-technical colleagues

• Excellent communication and documentation skills

• Ability to work well in a team environment

• Professional communication across all levels of the organization

• Experience working with enterprise data warehouses and big data

• Familiarity with ETL techniques

• Demonstrated ability to identify project risks.

• Experience in change management

• Skilled in project design and management. Can do big picture project management and detail results delivery

• Skilled in stakeholder facilitation. Ability to anticipate customer needs and understand customer requirements

• Ability to work independently

• Experience in designing, organizing, and managing multiple complex projects simultaneously and meeting deadlines.

• Has advanced knowledge in accessing, retrieving, manipulating, inserting, and deleting data from structured and unstructured databases.

• Is a lifelong learner and embodies a growth mindset.

• Works actively in improving own skills and knowledge through internal and external, formal and informal, structured and unstructured learning.

• Stays abreast of innovative developments in their area of work, and plays an active role in deploying them at IAR and WGU.

• Understands and abides by the relevant policies and methods to access, use, transform, store, and delete data in responsible, secure, and compliant ways.

Competencies Organizational Impact:

• Works to achieve operational targets with significant to major impact on department, Function, or Office results. May be responsible for managing large projects or processes within the department, function, or office.

• Performs work as directed with limited oversight.

• Problem Solving & Decision Making:

• Responsible for leveraging a systems-thinking approach, making moderate to significant improvements of processes, systems, and plans within the department, Function, or Office.

• Problems and issues faced are numerous and challenging and will require detailed information gathering and analysis. Problems typically affect multiple areas or specialties.

Communication & Influence:

• Collaborates cross-functionally with employees within and outside of the department. Typically has responsibility for communicating with parties external to the University.

• Works to influence parties within and outside the department, Function, or Office regarding policies, procedures, and practices.

• Leadership & Talent Management

• Is responsible for providing guidance, coaching, and training to other employees in the department, Function, or Office. Responsible for managing projects involving delegation of work and review of others' work products.

• Demonstrates the WGU leadership principles in all aspects of service to students, employees, and partners of WGU.

Job Qualifications:Minimum Qualifications:

• 5+ years of experience with a bachelor's degree, or 3+ years and a master's degree, or a doctorate or terminal degree without experience.

• Department Specific Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Statistics, Economics, Computer Science, applied mathematics discipline, business, or other related degrees

• 4 years experience in data analytics, business intelligence, or information technology

• Experience working with Agile methodology

• Demonstrated experience in project management

Preferred Qualifications:

• Master's degree in statistics, social sciences, data analytics, or other related degree

• Experience working in Higher Education

• Experience reporting within Salesforce and ServiceNow

• Time-series forecasting, machine learning, advanced ETL development, Spark, and big data

• Experience coding in SAS, SPSS, Stata, or other recognized statistical software

• Proficiency in Python, R, or Scala for processing and analyzing data

• Experience creating Machine Learning Predictive Models

• Experience in survey design and sampling methodology

• May have a broad knowledge of project management.

Physical Requirements:

• Prolonged periods sitting at a desk and working on a computer.

• Must be able to lift up to 15 pounds at times.

#D&I

The salary range for this position takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions including but not limited to skill sets; experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs.

At WGU, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their position, and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range is:

Pay Range: $77,200.00 - $115,700.00

WGU will accept applications for this position until 06/15/2024

How to apply: apply online

Full-time Regular Positions(FT classification, standard working hours = 40)

This is a full-time, regular position that is eligible for bonuses; medical, dental, vision, telehealth and mental healthcare; health savings account and flexible spending account; basic and voluntary life insurance; disability coverage; accident, critical illness and hospital indemnity supplemental coverages; legal and identity theft coverage; retirement savings plan; wellbeing program; discounted WGU tuition; and paid vacation, holidays, sick time, and parental leave.

The University is an equal opportunity employer.All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or protected veteran status.

Western Governors Univeristy is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation or any other classification protected by federal, state or local law.