Operations Research Analyst • Defense Analyst Support Hub (DASH) JOA#: GS-2026-1515-123 (DASH) Department: Department of War (DOW)
Agency: Office of the Secretary of War (OSW)
Hiring Organization: Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE)
Open Period: 10/1/2026-10/26/2026 Pay Scale & Grade: GS-12/13/14/15
Salary Range$102,415 - $197,200 Series & Appointment Type: 1515 Operations Research, Permanent - Schedule B Excepted Service
Location: Pentagon, Arlington, VA
Work Schedule: Full Time
Clearance Requirements: Must be able to obtain and maintain a Top Secret/SCI; Special Access Program (SAP/SAR) access required
Citizenship Requirement: Open to all US Citizens
Relocation expenses reimbursed: No
Duties and Responsibilities :
The selectee serves as an expert data and platform engineer or operations research practitioner within DASH, responsible for the architecture, development, integration, and operational sustainment of CAPE's shared data and tool ecosystem. Depending on the role and grade level, selectees will be responsible for:
ETL/ELT Pipeline Engineering: Designing, constructing, testing, and sustaining robust, automated data extraction, transformation, and ingestion pipelines into CAPE's analytic layer, replacing fragile, manual spreadsheets with scalable, code-driven pipelines.
Tool Integration and Deployment: Applying modern data engineering, containerization, and workflow orchestration practices (for example, SQL, Python, Apache Airflow or dbt equivalents, and Git version control) to automate recurring data ingestion cycles, meeting documented timeliness, reliability, security, and data-quality requirements for recurring analytic support. Partnering with SAID methodologists to integrate advanced, code-based analytic tools (such as Python, R, MATLAB, and GAMS packages) into the platform's production environment, establishing secure, self-service interfaces for analysts.
Data Governance and Standard Enforcement: Developing and enforcing the schema rules, taxonomies, and metadata definitions that hold CAPE's governed data layer to SAID's analytic-data standards: the rules for how data is structured, documented, and validated before analysis rests on it.
Reference Baseline Curation: Coordinating with the owning Department organizations to curate, reconcile, and maintain CAPE's governed reference copies of authoritative defense baselines, such as the Joint Country Operating Force Assessment (JCOFA) and joint force readiness systems.
Analytic Operations (On-Call Execution): Running program, simulation, and strategic models (such as whole-program resource allocation models) on request for CAPE's analysts, and returning the results accurately and on time. Executing the mission analysis environment's simulation campaigns and operating its emulation pipeline: storing and serving the emulators, re-fitting them when new simulation runs arrive, and launching the additional runs an emulator calls for, within the experiment SAID designed.
Contractor Technical Oversight: Defining operational and engineering requirements and conducting technical acceptance testing of contractor data, platform, and tool-integration deliverables , including the contracted build and sustainment of the mission analysis environment's platform; analytic methods and assurance standards remain with SAID.
Knowledge Management and Institutional Continuity: Cataloging past CAPE analyses and managing the shared analytic repositories that current study teams and the Analysis Working Group draw on.
Technical Cross-Training: Participating in cross-training across platform engineering and tool operation so that each fielded tool has at least two qualified government operators and no tool depends on a single person.
Mentorship (GS-14/15): Mentoring junior platform engineers and tool operators and managing their professional development within DASH.
Qualifications :
Basic Requirements :
A degree in operations research from an accredited college/university; or at least 24 semester hours in a combination of operations research, mathematics, probability, statistics, mathematical logic, science, or subject-matter courses requiring substantial competence in college-level mathematics or statistics. At least 3 of the 24 semester hours must have been in calculus.
Desired Skills: Your qualifications will be evaluated on your knowledge, skills, abilities, and competencies in the following areas:
Data Engineering and Analytic Platform Architectures: Experience constructing, scheduling, and optimizing data pipelines, and working with enterprise data architectures, cloud data warehouses, or big-data platforms to feed, calibrate, and validate operations research statistical and simulation models. Experience with the War Data Platform or other DoW data systems is desirable.
Analytic Software Integration: Applied mathematical modeling and scientific software development (or DevOps experience) in an operations research context, including deploying, containerizing, or integrating R, Python, MATLAB, or GAMS models into shared computing environments.
Simulation and Emulation Pipeline Operation: Experience running large simulation campaigns on shared computing platforms, and operating model-serving pipelines for statistical or machine-learning surrogates: registries, versioning, monitoring, and scheduled re-fitting.
Analytic Data Foundations and Baseline Curation: Experience in curating authoritative, multidimensional analytic baselines for decision support; Detailed knowledge of data management principles, including database schema design, master data management, metadata standard enforcement to ensure mathematical consistency, data integrity, and provenance across disparate operational and budget data sets.
Operations Research and Tool Execution: Familiarity with executing operational models, wargaming frameworks, or mathematical program-evaluation tools, and ability to run, debug, and extract results from complex simulation models on deadline.
Collaboration: Ability to work with platform owners, data stewards, Operations research methodologists, and strategic analysts to align technical infrastructure with decision timelines.
Communication: Ability to translate complex operations research models, platform engineering, database, and software architecture concepts into plain language for senior executives, while effectively translating analyst requirements into technical specifications.
Specialized Experience : To qualify at a grade, you must have at least one year of specialized experience (12 months at 40 hours per week) equivalent to at least the next lower grade level, performing the duties and demonstrating the competencies listed for that grade:
- GS-12 Qualifications (Computational Modeler): Under the guidance of senior staff, executing segments of data extraction and loading processes to support mathematical or simulation studies; assisting in pipeline maintenance; running pre-configured analytic models; and documenting technical workflows; OR a Ph.D. or equivalent doctoral degree.
- GS-13 Qualifications (Computational Modeler): Writing and optimizing scripts (Python, SQL, R) to extract, clean, and transform semi-structured and relational datasets to feed mathematical models; assisting in the maintenance and configuration of cloud-native data platforms, databases, or API integrations; executing pre-configured mathematical, simulation, or statistical models and documenting system test results; and troubleshooting schema inconsistencies and validating model input data integrity against established authoritative data dictionaries and conducting sensitivity analysis to verify algorithm performance and output reliability.
- GS-14 Qualifications (Senior Operations Research Analyst • Computational & Data Systems Lead): Experience independently designing, integrating, deploying and maintaining mathematical models, optimization algorithms and simulation frameworks across shared enterprise platforms; architecting analytical data baselines and with automated end-to-end data pipelines (ETL/ELT) to harmonize disparate financial, inventory, or operational datasets for quantitative analysis; integrating advanced mathematical algorithms, optimization scripts, or machine learning models into production analytic environments; evaluating technical deliverables from contractor development teams and translating customer requirements into engineering specifications; and developing interactive dashboards or self-service applications to operationalize complex decision support data for decision-makers.
- GS-15 Qualifications (Senior Operations Research Analyst/Principal Modeler): Serving as the principal modeling architect or product technical authority for an organization's analytic computing infrastructure or enterprise cloud data infrastructure; directing quantitative data governance and baseline validation to support high-stakes strategic studies across security domains,; authoring long-range technical roadmaps that unify disparate database platforms, simulation tools, authoritative data backbones and user-facing analytic environments into a coherent decision support ecosystem; serving as the government technical lead for contracted engineering support, evaluating deliverables and recommending acceptance within formally delegated acquisition responsibilities; and leading, mentoring, and developing a multi-disciplinary technical cadre of operations research analysts, data engineers, and computer scientists, within a senior-level decision-support organization.
Part-time or Unpaid/volunteer work experience: - Credit will be given for appropriate unpaid and/or part-time work.
- You must clearly identify the duties and responsibilities in each position held and the total number of hours per week.
- Refers to paid and unpaid experience, including volunteer work done through National Service Programs (i.e., Peace Corps, AmeriCorps) and other organizations (e.g., professional; philanthropic; religious; spiritual; community; student and social).
- Volunteer work helps build critical competencies, knowledge and skills that can provide valuable training and experience that translates directly to paid employment.
- You will receive credit for all qualifying experience, including volunteer experience.
