Director of Applied Analytics (Senior Public Service Administrator, Option 3)

State of Illinois•Chicago, IL

1d•$150,000 - $165,000•Onsite

About The Position

This position serves as the Director of Applied Analytics who leads the development and delivery of enterprise analytics capabilities, including BI solutions, data storytelling, data literacy programs, and machine learning initiatives. This role drives actionable insights, strengthens data driven decision making, and ensures the organization’s analytics strategy aligns with business priorities.

Requirements

Requires knowledge, skill, and mental development equivalent to completion of four (4) years of college with coursework in management information systems, information technology, computer science, Statistics, Mathematics, Data Science, Economics, Engineering, Operations Research, Public Policy, or a directly related Information Technology field.
Requires prior experience equivalent to four (4) years of progressively responsible administrative experience in a public or private business Information Technology organization.
Requires three (3) years of professional supervisory or managerial experience over analytics, data science, operations research, business intelligence, or analytics engineering staff.

Nice To Haves

Six (6) years of professional experience directing large scale business analytics or program performance evaluation initiatives across multiple divisions or agencies, including production deployment and lifecycle management of predictive and machine learning model and/ or business analytics frameworks that assess service delivery effectiveness and drive measurable operational or policy improvement.
Four (4) years of professional experience translating complex statistical, predictive, and evaluative analytics into executive level strategic narratives, including demonstrated success developing structured data storytelling frameworks that improve decision velocity, executive comprehension, or performance outcomes.
Four (4) years of professional experience serving as a senior advisor or enterprise authority on strategic and accessible recommendations and confidential executive briefs that stem from finding from quantitative methods evaluating modeling risk, exercising independent statistical judgment, and shaping enterprise analytics strategy and governance.
Five (5) years of professional experience exercising independent judgment in evaluating model performance risk and program performance outcomes leveraging model validation and statistical integrity techniques, including cross validation, precision/recall, AUC, RMSE, sensitivity analysis, robustness testing, and interpretation of probabilistic outputs and uncertainty.
Four (4) years of professional experience overseeing the production deployment and full lifecycle management of predictive or supervised machine learning models, including establishing and governing enterprise MLOps standards covering development, validation, deployment, monitoring, drift detection, automated testing, retraining workflows, and model risk detection in production environments.
Four (4) years of professional experience designing and implementing enterprise data literacy and analytics competency frameworks, including tiered curriculum models aligned to organizational maturity and targeted to executive, managerial, and practitioner audiences.
Four (4) years of professional experience developing and enforcing enterprise level analytics standards, including performance measurement frameworks, policy and procedure design, reproducibility requirements, and methodological rigor for evaluative, predictive, and comparative analytics.
Four (4) years of professional experience with modern analytics, modeling, and visualization platforms, such as Azure ML, Databricks, Python, R, SAS, MLflow, Power BI, or Tableau, including experience directing teams in developing dashboards, decision support tools, and standardized reporting structures.
Extensive knowledge of regression, classification, clustering, time series forecasting, simulation methodologies, and supervised machine learning approaches, with demonstrated ability to embed predictive analytics into operational processes, applications, and enterprise decision workflows.
Demonstrated ability to lead multidisciplinary analytics teams, including oversight of cost benefit analysis, benchmarking, efficiency studies, outcome evaluations, and strategic modeling approaches that support executive planning and legislative reporting.

Responsibilities

Serves as the Director of Applied Analytics for the Department of Innovation & Technology, planning, developing, organizing, controlling, and managing enterprise business analytics initiatives to evaluate program operations, service delivery effectiveness, fiscal impact, and performance outcomes.
Provides enterprise leadership in translating complex analytics into strategic narratives for executive and legislative audiences such that data analysis tells a cogent story.
Architects and approves tiered data literacy frameworks to improve analytics competency across executive, managerial, and practitioner audiences.
Serves as enterprise authority for advanced statistical and supervised machine learning methodologies supporting predictive, forecasting, simulation, and evaluative analytics across agencies.
Leads enterprise governance of supervised machine learning and predictive models, including lifecycle management, MLOps standards, and model risk detection to ensure sustained reliability in production environments.
Serves as full-line supervisor.
Keeps abreast of new developments in the information technology field by continuing education through online training platforms, in person meetings, training sessions, seminars, and conferences to increase familiarity with and remain current on products, vendors, techniques, and procedures.
Performs other duties as required or assigned which are reasonably within the scope of the duties enumerated above.

Benefits

Competitive Group Insurance benefits including health, life, dental and vision plans
Flexible work schedules (when available and dependent upon position)
10 -25 days of paid vacation time annually (10 days for first year of state employment)
12 days of paid sick time annually which carryover year to year
3 paid personal business days per year
13-14 paid holidays per year dependent on election years
12 weeks of paid parental leave
Pension plan through the State Employees Retirement System
Deferred Compensation Program – voluntary supplemental retirement plan
Optional pre-tax programs -Medical Care Assistance Plan (MCAP) & Dependent Care Assistant Plan (DCAP)
Tuition Reimbursement Program and Federal Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program eligibility