Analyst

At Allegheny County Department of Human Services (DHS), our mission is to improve the welfare of the County’s most vulnerable residents. We operate, influence, and fund more than $1 billion in essential services that over 200,000 residents rely on each year, including mental health and addiction treatment, homeless housing, and child and older adult protective services. Over the past 20 years, we have built a national reputation for using analytics and technology to deliver more effective and efficient public services, and we are convinced data still has significant room to improve our clients’ lives.

Analyst - Office of Analytics and Technology

We are looking for analysts with strong skills in program analysis, operations research, analytics engineering, or healthcare analytics. Analysts work with nationally recognized, integrated human services data to answer the questions that shape how residents are served.

Our teams own the measurement, reporting, and data tools behind these services, with a charter of:

• Giving program leaders a trustworthy picture of how services are performing and where they break down.
• Partnering with program staff to find bottlenecks, test improvements, and inform operational and strategic decisions.
• Building reusable, documented tools so recurring reporting runs reliably and partners can answer routine questions themselves.

Analysts support child welfare, prevention and community services, aging, and Medicaid and behavioral health programs, working closely with program managers and leadership, the wider Analytics and Technology teams, and academic and foundation research partners.

Strong candidates are clear, organized thinkers who turn ambiguous program questions into answerable ones, favoring simplicity over methodological complexity and impact over technical purity. They are curious about how programs work, creative about improving them, fearless with messy administrative data, and careful with information about vulnerable residents.

Current analytics needs on our teams

These are some of the skill needs we want to fill across our teams. You do not need to match one profile exactly or have experience in our programs; you will learn the subject matter on the job. If you have strengths in any of these areas, tell us in your cover letter.

Operations Research and Performance Improvement Analyst

Brings structured, quantitative problem solving to how services run.

• Leads performance management: defines measures, reviews them routinely with program leaders, and turns results into action.
• Designs and runs quality improvement projects (process mapping, root cause analysis, PDSA cycles) and measures their impact.
• Models capacity, caseload, queueing, and workflow to find bottlenecks and test alternatives before rollout.

Typical backgrounds: operations research, industrial and systems engineering, management science, policy analysis, economics, or quality improvement.

Analytics Engineering and Automation Analyst

Builds the data infrastructure and tools that keep recurring reporting running without manual effort.

• Automates recurring reporting with scheduled pipelines and certified data sources.
• Builds and maintains automated dashboards and self-serve tools for program staff.
• Writes clean, tested, version-controlled Python and SQL, and builds reusable data pipelines the team can extend.
• Scopes technical work around value and impact rather than complexity, delivering tools that are easy to use, easy to maintain, and built to fit how programs actually operate.

Typical backgrounds:  information systems, data science, data engineering, or business intelligence, computer science.

Medicaid and Behavioral Health Operations Analyst

Owns analytics on program performance, service access, population health, finance, and quality within behavioral health programs.

• Leads performance management: defines measures, reviews them routinely with program leaders, and turns results into action.
• Designs and runs quality improvement projects (process mapping, root cause analysis, PDSA cycles) and measures their impact.
• Models capacity, caseload, queueing, and workflow to find bottlenecks and test alternatives before rollout.
• Works with healthcare and behavioral health datasets, including Medicaid claims, to understand access, utilization, cost, and quality.
• Applies an interest in healthcare policy, managed care operations, or behavioral health to program and financial decisions.
• Quickly learns new domains and translates findings for program, finance, and leadership audiences.

Typical backgrounds: health policy, health economics, health services research, clinical informatics, biostatistics or epidemiology, or hands-on work with healthcare data.

Minimum qualifications

• Breaks ambiguous problems down, questions assumptions, weighs alternatives, and reaches sound conclusions from imperfect data.
• Learns how programs actually operate and finds the real need behind a request.
• Designs the right solution for that need (an analysis, dashboard, pipeline, or self-serve tool) and can justify the choice.
• Communicates insights clearly and turns them into recommendations that leaders, program staff, and technical peers can act on.
• Builds trusted working relationships with program staff and becomes a go-to voice in operational and strategic decisions.
• Brings creative ideas for improving practice, from rethinking a recurring report to designing a new measure or tool.
• Has two or more years of related analytical experience (such as research, statistics, economics, GIS, BI and reporting, or database work), or equivalent transferable experience.
• Has working proficiency in Python or R and a query language such as SQL.
• Writes clean, documented, reusable code, and has project work they can share and explain.
• Balances speed with quality and validates results before they ship.
• Holds a bachelor’s degree in an aligned field, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Handles sensitive data on vulnerable populations responsibly and embraces the DHS mission.

Preferred qualifications

• Program evaluation and consulting: running or supporting evaluations of government or nonprofit programs, or advising program leaders on findings.
  
  
• Technical experience: intermediate or higher SQL scripting, Python/R, automated dashboards (i.e Tableau and PowerBI) automation with certified data sources and scheduled refreshes, sound Git habits (branches, code review, rollback), and some testing practice.
• A master’s degree in a quantitative field such as operations research, industrial engineering, statistics, economics, data science, health policy, or public policy.
• Experience with messy administrative data.
• Interest in child welfare, education, early childhood, health, justice, housing, or other human-services work.
• A clear record of learning new tools and acting on feedback.

What we offer

• Work that directly shapes services for families in Allegheny County.
• Ownership of a defined portfolio and the freedom to redesign how that work gets done.
• A modern stack (Python/R, Oracle SQL data warehouse, Tableau, ArcGIS, Git, Airflow, Docker, Power Apps) and approved AI tools.
• Rich integrated human-services data, experienced mentors, and academic research partners.

Role details

• Salary: $80,000 to $88,000 per year.
• Location: on-site in downtown Pittsburgh, PA.
• Work authorization: must be authorized to work in the U.S. without restriction.
• Clearances: Act 33, Act 34 and FBI.
• Supervision: no supervisory responsibilities.
• Physical requirements: ability to sit 2+ hours, carry up to 10 pounds, and reliable transportation for community work. Other duties may be assigned.

Application

If you do not meet every qualification, we still encourage you to apply. This work spans several skill areas, and we do not expect any candidate to be fully qualified across all of them.

Why DHS?

DHS is diverse, but we strive to be even more inclusive. This includes equity in hiring and advancement, as well as in unleashing the creativity and ideas of staff at every level of DHS. It has strong, assertive leaders. We do not hire yes-people.

You can make a big impact here. We stand out as one of the best human services organizations in the country. But we need problem-solvers, innovators, and terrific leaders to make sure we are smart in how we use our funding so that we reach the people who most need our help to make their lives better.

“DHS strives to be the kind of place where a diverse mix of talented people want to come to grow and do their best work.”

-From the organization’s statement on Equity and Inclusion

AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER -M/F/V/D