The USPS OIG is seeking a highly qualified applicant to fill our Data Scientist Specialist position in the Research and Insights Solution Center (RISC) Directorate located in Arlington, Virginia. Bring your skills and voice to our team!
The RISC Directorate conducts innovative research and analysis on Postal Service operations in support of auditors and agents. Our team develops analytical products that facilitate lead generation and provide critical insights for audit and investigative activities. Our methods frequently involve statistics or complex, multi-step analyses of large and disparate data systems.
This position is with RISC's Strategic Foresight & Oversight (SFO) team, which provides proactive oversight and insight into postal operations, finances, and emerging market risks. Through qualitative and quantitative analysis of USPS and postal/parcel market data, the SFO develops postal and industry intelligence and provides senior OIG leadership with awareness and clear options regarding emerging issues of strategic importance.
The successful candidate will work extensively in a collaborative, team environment that involves audit and investigative clients, subject matter experts, project team leaders, and executive stakeholders. RISC's work has a strong customer focus, requiring effective written and verbal communication skills to understand the needs of the client and to give structure to complex problems with undefined or ambiguous solutions.
Our team requires candidates with strong analytical skills to develop fitting methodologies that maximize the impact for the client and allow successful project execution. The candidate will exhibit effective communication skills which include the documentation of analytical methodologies and briefings and presentations of technical content to executive leadership, stakeholders, peers, and other audiences.
The USPS OIG uses a Pay Banding system, which is equivalent to the Federal GS scale. Grade and salary determinations will be made based upon a candidate's education and professional experience. This position is being advertised at the Specialist Band level, equivalent to a GS-14. The salary range for this position is $143,913.00 - $187,093.00. The salary figures include locality pay.
Please note that the duties and responsibilities associated with this position may vary based upon the agency's needs at the time of hire. The following description of major duties and responsibilities is only intended to give applicants a general overview of the expectations. Works independently and within teams to use the necessary data extraction, manipulation, and aggregation techniques to prepare, clean, normalize, and validate data related to varied projects and tasks.
Independently research, extracts, evaluates, interprets, and visualizes data and information as actionable intelligence for auditors and investigators to detect, prevent, and respond to fraud, waste, and abuse. Advises on the potential benefits/uses of automation to improve the efficiency of program operations. Designs experiments, tests hypotheses, and builds scalable models using data science and artificial intelligence (e.g. machine learning) methods.
Designs, develops, and adapts mathematical, statistical, econometric, and other analytical solutions for audit, investigation, research, and support functions. Leads artificial intelligence activities such as natural language processing, predictive analytics, and machine learning model development, training, evaluation, testing, refinement, deployment, and maintenance. Translates complex technical findings into an easily understood narrative.
Prepares comprehensive documentation for requirements, test plans, user manuals, technical diagrams, and training materials. Develops project communications and maintains effective working relationships between project teams, stakeholders, and management. Provides advice on issues affecting projects, such as data access, quality, and storage. Contributes to and presents training and conference materials to large audiences.
Independently performs comprehensive and efficient data collection and analysis of a variety of data sources to develop trends, descriptive statistics, or other insights. Uses expert level knowledge to identify and develop sources of information from structured and unstructured data, criminal intelligence databases, public information sources, internal Postal Service databases, reference manuals, and audit and law enforcement reports.
Uses relational databases, data lakes, data lake houses, and other data environments to create a variety of analytic products such as business intelligence tools, summary tables, comparison graphs, or temporal, association, and link analysis charts. Interacts with other agencies and builds relationships with peers to share information and learn the latest developments in analytical tools and techniques.
Develops substantial knowledge of database applications and environments and shares expertise with coworkers in support of agency goals and objectives.
Education must be accredited by an institution recognized by the U.S. Department of Education. Applicants can verify accreditation here: https://www.ed.gov/laws-and-policy/higher-education-laws-and-policy/college-accreditation. Special Instructions for Candidates with Foreign Education: Education completed outside the United States must be deemed equivalent to that gained in U.S. education programs. You must submit all necessary documents to a private U.S.
credential evaluation service to interpret equivalency of your education against courses given in U.S. accredited colleges and universities. For further information visit: https://sites.ed.gov/international/recognition-of-foreign-qualifications.
This position is with Office of the Inspector General, USPS, Other Agencies and Independent Organizations.
The posted pay range is $143913 – $187093/yr.
This position is eligible for telework.
This position requires a Other security clearance.
Applications close on 2026-11-12.
This position is open under the 'Public' hiring path.
Source: USAJOBS.gov — U.S. Federal Government · Retrieved 2026-10-28 · Not affiliated with or endorsed by OPM or USAJOBS.gov
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