Principal Cost Analyst

The MITRE Corporation • New Bedford, MA

2d • $157,200 - $235,800 • Onsite

About The Position

MITRE is seeking an experienced cost analyst to join their Business Analytics and Acquisition Affordability Department. This role supports multiple projects focused on solving critical economic and financial challenges for sponsors. The department emphasizes technical excellence, creativity, and the intersection of emerging technologies, cost, business, and economic impacts. The work involves engaging with sponsors, collecting and analyzing large datasets, conducting market research, investigating policies, understanding the budgetary and political environment, and performing additional research. This is a project-oriented position that may require project management, collaboration, communication to diverse audiences, and direct sponsor engagement. The department's capabilities include Cost Estimation and Analysis, Investment Economics & Decision Analysis, and Strategic Business & Financial Analytics. The role supports cost, economic, business analyses, and data science, potentially involving life-cycle cost estimating, tradeoff and affordability analyses, decision analysis, portfolio investment analysis, economic analysis and modeling, research, business case analysis, modeling and simulation, advanced statistical techniques, and constrained optimization. The environment is dynamic, with tasks that are rarely routine and often require novel approaches. Candidates should be comfortable working on multiple projects simultaneously, with limited structure and supervision, and engaging directly with sponsors to solve complex, ambiguous problems.

Requirements

• A minimum of 10 years of related experience with a bachelor’s degree, including previous leadership experience in cost estimating, cost risk analysis, and/or budgeting and the CPIC process in defense, intelligence and/or civil agencies or 8 years and a master’s degree; or a PhD with 5 years’ experience; or equivalent combination of related education and work experience.
• BA/BS or Master’s in Economics, Mathematics, Statistics, Finance, Business, Operations Research, Systems Engineering, Data Science, or related field
• Proficiency in development of risk-adjusted LCCEs and investment economic and decision analyses
• Proficient with MS Office Suite, and other tools for analysis
• Technical depth with demonstrated skills and experience in presenting analytical results both verbally and in writing
• Must be able to obtain Top Secret Clearance
• U.S. Citizenship is required.
• This position requires a minimum of 4 days a week on-site
• This requisition requires the candidate to have a minimum of the following clearance(s): Top Secret
• This requisition requires the hired candidate to have or obtain, within one year from the date of hire, the following clearance(s): Top Secret

Responsibilities

• Lead teams of junior analysts to successfully meet project objectives
• Identify, scope, and execute structured analysis for government sponsors while managing timelines, deliverables and outcomes
• Develop models and perform qualitative and quantitative analyses to understand the cost/economic/financial impact of investments, risk mitigation strategies, options and other government actions
• Collect and analyze financial, cost, and economic data
• Develop and/or evaluate program technical and programmatic baselines
• Develop innovative development, production and operating and support (O&S) cost estimating techniques for a broad range of cost elements
• Develop independent or program life cycle cost estimates (LCCEs) and accompanying cost and schedule risk, uncertainty, and sensitivity analysis
• Develop cost estimates in support of source selection, including Independent Government Cost Estimates (IGCEs)
• Perform cost-related studies and analysis, e.g,, on rate reasonableness
• Develop investment economic and decision analyses, including business case analyses, cost/benefit analyses, analysis-of-alternatives, and portfolio analysis
• Develop strategic business and financial analyses, including but not limited to economic studies, cost recovery strategies, budget development & planning, and affordability analysis
• Assess the credibility of government and industry cost estimates using benchmark guidance, such as the GAO 12 steps and the Cost Estimating Body of Knowledge (CEBoK)
• Assess the credibility of government and industry cost savings initiatives data.
• Conduct surveys and utilize various sampling techniques.
• Research various fields including politics, national security, healthcare, education, energy, etc.
• Make use of historical data and analyze market trends.
• Assist in identifying sources of information and gathering a wide range of quantitative and qualitative data to support decisions that have implications for MITRE and its government sponsors
• Apply analysis skills, including exploratory data analysis, time series analysis, and linear regression
• Draw conclusions from analyses and clearly and concisely articulate key findings in both written and verbal form
• Assist in developing data visualization products that improve the presentation of complex data sets
• Translate unstructured data and nontraditional sources of information into business insights
• Perform data cleaning, visualization and analysis in standard statistical and graphics software languages such as R, Stata and Excel

Benefits

• competitive benefits
• exceptional professional development opportunities for career growth
• culture of innovation that embraces adaptability, collaboration, technical excellence, and people in partnership

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal