Operations Research / Systems Analyst (ORSA) Hanover, MDThe Operations Research (OR) Analyst - Data Engineering & Analytics Focus provides advanced data integration, architecture, and analytics capabilities to enable quantitative analysis across a Federal Agency's personnel vetting, industrial security, and counterintelligence operations. This position is responsible for transforming disparate, complex data sources into unified analytical datasets that enable the Federal Agency to transition from reactive reporting toward proactive, mathematically grounded forecasting and optimization.
Essential Duties & Responsibilities:- Data Integration & Architecture
- Design and implement data architectures that integrate information from multiple disparate source systems supporting personnel vetting, industrial security, and counterintelligence missions
- Build and maintain ETL pipelines that extract, transform, and load data from heterogeneous sources including relational databases, flat files, APIs, and legacy systems
- Develop entity resolution approaches to link person, company, and facility records across systems that lack common unique identifiers
- Create reusable data integration frameworks that accommodate changes in source system schemas and evolving business rules
- Data Quality & Validation
- Develop data quality frameworks that assess completeness, accuracy, consistency, and timeliness of source data
- Implement data validation processes that identify and handle missing data, duplicates, temporal inconsistencies, and conflicting information
- Document data provenance, transformations, quality metrics, and known limitations to ensure analytical reproducibility
- Collaborate with system owners and data stewards to resolve data quality issues at the source
- Analytics & Visualization
- Apply statistical analysis and exploratory data analysis to understand operational patterns and trends within integrated datasets
- Develop interactive dashboards and visualization products that communicate complex data insights to technical and non-technical audiences
- Translate data findings into objective, data-driven insights that support strategic and operational decision-making
- Create data marts and analysis-ready datasets optimized for specific use cases (process modeling, risk assessment, resource optimization)
- Collaboration & Support
- Partner with modeling/simulation and optimization specialists to define analytical dataset requirements
- Support advanced analytics by providing clean, well-documented, empirically grounded datasets
- Participate in cross-functional team activities to maintain technical standards and share knowledge
- Adapt analytical approaches to work within data availability constraints while maintaining analytical rigor
Required Skills/Experience 8+ years of progressive, hands-on operations research or data analytics experience, including demonstrated application of statistical analysis, data integration, and quantitative methods to real-world operational problems3–5 years of that experience supporting DoD or Intelligence Community mission areas such as personnel vetting, industrial security (NISP), counterintelligence, or insider threat
Expert-level proficiency in SQL and relational database design, including complex queries, joins, subqueries, and performance optimization
Demonstrated, hands-on proficiency in an analytical programming language (Python or R), including libraries for data manipulation (pandas, dplyr), analysis, and visualization
Proven experience building ETL pipelines and data integration workflows across multiple disparate data sources
Experience with data architecture for analytics (data warehousing, dimensional modeling, data lakes)
Experience assessing and improving data quality in complex, multi-source operational environments
Ability to translate technical data challenges into clear communication for non-technical stakeholders
Experience working with data in secure (classified) government environments
Secret clearance required (active or ability to obtain)
Desired Skills/Experience
Advanced degree in Operations Research, Applied Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science, Data Science, Information Systems, or a related quantitative discipline
Familiarity with NISP, clearance adjudication processes, and/or insider threat/counterintelligence analytic frameworks
Experience with entity resolution, record linkage, and master data management techniques
Familiarity with both legacy government systems and modern cloud-based data architectures
Experience with version control and collaborative development (Git/GitHub)
Knowledge of data governance frameworks, metadata management, and data cataloging
Experience with big data technologies (Spark, distributed computing)
Familiarity with NoSQL databases (MongoDB, Neo4j, graph databases)
Data visualization tools (Tableau, Power BI, Plotly, D3.js)
Experience with data orchestration tools (Airflow, Prefect, Luigi)API development and integration experience (REST, SOAP)
Knowledge of queueing theory, statistical modeling, or optimization methods to better support analytical consumers
The SMX salary determination process takes into account a number of factors, including but not limited to, geographic location, Federal Government contract labor categories, relevant prior work experience, specific skills, education and certifications. At SMX, one of our Core Values is to Invest in Our People so we offer a competitive mix of compensation, learning & development opportunities, and benefits. Some key components of our robust benefits include health insurance, paid leave, and retirement.
The proposed salary for this position is:$123,000 - $185,000 USDSMX is an Equal Opportunity employer including disabilities and veterans.
