Senior Data & Systems Analyst

Location: Remote (U.S.

-based)

Modernizing America’s Education Finance Data Infrastructure

Accurate and comparable education finance data is the essential foundation for effective governance and robust research. The Strategic Public Education National Data (SPEND) Initiative is a non-partisan organization and a fiscally sponsored project of Education Resource Strategies (ERS). Our mission is to maintain and modernize the technical pipeline that improves the accuracy, comparability, and timeliness of education finance data. We aim to provide a stable, objective data foundation—a modern data utility that serves the needs of researchers, state and district leaders, and the broader education field.

• Preserve and Upgrade National Data Infrastructure: Your work directly contributes to sustaining and improving the longitudinal school finance datasets that underpin billions of dollars in funding and decades of research on resource allocation and system effectiveness.
• Execute Technical Modernization: Transition the national data infrastructure from fragmented legacy reporting to automated, high-quality systems, establishing an objective foundation for fiscal data collection and transparency.
• Join a Mission-Focused Team with Institutional Stability: Contribute as a foundational member of a new initiative supported by a multi-year general operating grant and the established operational infrastructure of ERS.

SPEND is seeking a Senior Data & Systems Analyst to support the development, validation, and analysis of the next generation of education finance data. The Senior Data & Systems Analyst will serve as a cross-cutting team member contributing to SPEND’s 1.) data continuity and enrichment efforts and 2.) cutting-edge machine learning (ML) pilot model through the development and execution of quantitative analyses.

The ideal candidate will have previous experience in both data analytics and education to ensure organization strategy and methods properly account for the current data landscape, the perspectives of data providers, and the needs of data users.

Focus:
Dataset Curation, Organization, Standardization and Process Validation

Summary:

Lead on QA/verification, support on statistical alignment & process work

• In collaboration with senior technical staff, support internal data systems and ingestion processes through data pipelines.
• Support the Senior Associate Data Scientist to create and implement processes to enhance current federal school finance data collections through data product development.
• Build and maintain quality assurance processes that identify anomalies and outliers in district- and state-level financial data.
• Deepen current data by accurately and completely incorporating long‑term obligations such as pension and facilities expenditures.
• Implement processes to correctly incorporate contributions from sub‑contractor subject matter experts.
• Support development and release of data products (datasets, interactive web tools) to share SPEND and public education finance data.

Focus:
Data System Management, Dataset Improvement and Alignment

Summary:

Support Senior Associate Data Scientist and ML Engineer in model creation through data system support.

• Support creation and maintenance of training data for machine learning models that map local accounting codes to standardized national categories.
• Manage the manual validation of the ML outputs, checking automated results against real‑world district spending data.
• Evaluate model outputs and conduct error analysis in collaboration with the technical team.
• Pe…