Research Analyst

Primary Purpose

CNA is hiring for a Research Analyst to join their Data Science for Defense Production Systems Program. The role is assigned to a team with a focus on technical warfighting and industrial base analysis. The team works closely with Navy sponsors to inform consequential decisions about force design.

Staff at this level will be leading smaller/less complex activities or will be serving as an important contributing team member on projects.

Job Description and/or Duties

• With minimal or no guidance, meets CNA's quality standards when working on well-structured pieces of a project.
• Demonstrates ability to develop sound analytic frameworks and associated analytic methodologies/techniques for addressing both structured and unstructured problems.
• With direction and supervision, clearly defines, structures, and executes a piece of a complex study to meet quality standards.
• Demonstrates analytic creativity and curiosity.
• Develops and maintains broad, general institutional knowledge of primary clients/sponsors; their culture, organization, and issues.
• Contributes productively and harmoniously to the work of others; treats everyone respectfully, professionally and fairly.
• Keeps others informed. Proactively identifies and seeks out others working on similar topics.
• Works to identify opportunities for collaborations within team, division, and operating unit.
• Supports business development efforts and/or marketing activities by maintaining strong client relationships through high quality work, increasing the visibility of our work, and other related activities such as proposal preparation.
• Interacts with sponsors/clients under the supervision of an experienced colleague, and with study POCs independently.
• Makes significant contributions to research publications and analytic products for individual projects.
• Demonstrates ability to communicate results of work in a clear and concise fashion.
• Effectively communicates one-on-one and in groups. Can document work efficiently and accurately.
• Can effectively present work to colleagues, sponsors, and small audiences that are familiar with content.
• Works with minimal or no guidance on focused, well-structured pieces of projects.
• Works under closer supervision on more complex, less-structured tasks.
• Can serve as task lead for pieces of projects by managing own activities.
• May lead small projects under the supervision of an RTL/CMD.
• Exhibits a positive attitude in interactions with colleagues and clients/sponsors.
• Provides clear guidance to colleagues on tasks.
• Takes responsibility for own actions and outcomes.
• Performs other duties as assigned.

Job Requirements

Education: Minimum Master's degree in a relevant field or equivalent experience, PhD preferred. Preference for applicants with backgrounds in operations research, industrial engineering, management science, systems engineering, data science, statistics, or quantitative/computational social sciences.

Experience: Typical minimum requirements Ph.D. & 0+ years or Master's & 2+ years of experience in research and analysis. Requires experience in R, Python, or other similar programming language. Experience with interactive visualizations, graphical user interfaces, and modeling and simulation preferred.

Skills

• Ability to make significant contributions to projects/analyses
• Strong analytic curiosity/creativity
• Ability to operate independently in the execution of assignments
• Ability to work in a multi-disciplinary environment
• Strong critical thinking skills
• Knowledge of research techniques
• Strong planning and organizational skills
• Excellent interpersonal, oral and written communication skills
• Ability to interact positively and somewhat independently with clients

Other: Ability to obtain and maintain an Active Secret Security Clearance.