Job description
Analyst - Analysis Insights team
Contract: Permanent
Location: The role can be based in either our London or Newcastle office, with a minimum of 2 days per week in the office.
Salary: £44, in London and £37, in Newcastle
Introduction
Thank you for your interest in joining the National Audit Office as an Analyst. This will give you a better idea of who we are, what you’ll do when you join us, and what we offer. It also explains how to apply.
Our position is unique, and our work is extraordinarily influential. We are independent of government and the civil service and scrutinise public spending for Parliament. This means we work for, and for the good of, everyone in the country. We help society work better – supporting and enabling improvements in the way services are delivered right across the public sector. The recommendations from our work result in financial savings and positive changes in government to improve services and ensure value for money for the taxpayer.
For you, this means work that has a greater value, and offers a greater challenge. You’ll tackle complex projects that inform debates and influence some of the biggest decisions that government makes. You’ll collaborate with dedicated and talented people toward shared and important goals. And, by taking on new opportunities and challenges, you’ll build a rewarding and fascinating career – one that will allow you to make an impact that you, and the nation, can clearly see.
As an Analyst you will join our central Analysis Hub to provide specialist analysis support to teams across the office, and to develop business critical analytical tools. If you like what you see and can meet our requirements, then we want to hear from you.
More about the NAO, including some of our recent work, is available on our website
The Role
Each year we produce around 65 major Value for Money (VFM) reports examining various aspects of government programmes and projects. VFM reports are multi-method reports delivered to demanding timetables. We also publish over financial audit certifications each year.
We want to recruit an Analyst with exceptional quantitative analysis skills to join our central Analysis Hub. Our team provides specialist analytical support and develop business critical tools to teams across the office who deliver value for money reports and financial audit work.
Analysts are expected to spend part of their time developing and using their expertise to contribute to other specialist networks across the office. This includes providing analytical insight and support to others outside of your team on your areas of expertise such as wider analytical techniques and methods, commercial and regulatory issues, digital transformation and data use in the public sector, financial risk and management, major project delivery, and people and operational management.
How to Apply:
To apply please submit your CV and completed application form (links for both documents are below).
Candidate pack-
Application form-
Please do not submit any other documents at this stage as these will not be reviewed. Should the system request a covering letter please submit your completed application form.
We will invite applicants by email to complete a numerical & verbal reasoning online assessment. Following completion of the assessments, we will review your CV and application form.
If you are successful following those stages, we will ask you to complete a case study exercise, and we may invite you for a final interview.
If you are interested in applying, you will need to submit your CV and complete the application form (links for both documents are below). Please do not submit any other documents at this stage as these will not be reviewed. Should the system request a covering letter please submit your completed application form.
If you experience any issues during the application process, please contact
Nationality Requirement:
• UK Nationals
• Nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• Nationals from the EU, EEA or Switzerland with (or eligible for) status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
Equal opportunities and diversity
Disability and Reasonable Adjustments
Applicants with a disability who wish their application to be considered under the Disability Confident scheme should confirm this when submitting their application. Under this scheme we guarantee an interview to an applicant with a disability who meets the minimum requirements for the role. You should also let our HR team know if you wish us to consider any Reasonable Adjustments at any stage of the process (HR Service Desk ().
Applicants will not be discriminated against on the grounds of any protected characteristic.
Responsibilities The main responsibilities include:
oAnalysing and interpreting data on a wide range of relevant public policy topics, using a range of quantitative and advanced analytics methods.
oBuilding and maintaining analytical tools to support financial audit and value for money work at scale.
oSupport the delivery of our financial audit model assurance work, through reviewing and reproducing complex quantitative models.
oWorking with large datasets to prepare for further analysis.
oPresenting clearly to senior colleagues and non-technical specialists your findings from complex and technical analysis, along with key limitations or caveats.
oProviding written and oral briefings to managers and senior staff to provide assurance over the analysis carried out.
oProviding advice and support to other teams using your analytical expertise.
oInvestigating and utilising new and emerging analytics tools and methods, to enhance analytical capability and efficiency.
Relationships and Accountability
You will work in our central Analysis Hub and AIDA team and deliver work to time and budget. Your team leader will be a Senior Audit Manager and you will work closely with other analytical specialists to support others across the office.
The impact you’ll make
Right from the start, you’ll contribute to work that matters. All our work helps hold government to account for the way it uses public money and helps to promote improvements in public service delivery. The scope of our impact is huge – from health to education to justice to overseas development to the BBC and Bank of England – and much more.
Our recommendations and reports on good practice help government improve public services. In alone, our work led to:
o£5. billion in positive financial impacts
o£53 of positive financial impact for every £1 of net expenditure
o93% of our recommendations were accepted or partially accepted by government
You can find out a lot more about us and our work from our website: Here are some examples of recent work:
o For our report on Supporting the UK’s priority industry sectors( we conducted thematic analysis to understand the most common barriers to growth described within departmental sector plans. This work involved extracting the text from these documents, embedding these using a large language model before calculating each paragraph's statistical similarity to a set of pre-defined themes.
o For our report on Government's management of legal aid( we conducted primary analysis to understand how changes in the number and distribution of legal aid provider offices had impacted journey times for members of the public. This involved geospatial analysis techniques and nearest neighbour matching to understand the distances that population centroids were from individual office locations.
o We tested multiple machine learning algorithms and developed an independent challenger model to provide assurance over Homes England’s Help to Buy portfolio valuation. This independent estimate enabled us to scrutinise the client’s methodology and assess its reasonableness as part of our financial audit assurance work.
o We developed an analytics tool that uses machine learning to partially automate fraud risk analysis in financial audit journals, enabling a more consistent and higher quality approach.
o For our Investigation into the performance of HM Passport Office( we used novel analysis to estimate passport application caseload and backlogs, by reverse engineering passport caseload numbers at different points in time from outturn data on the number of passports issued.
o We published an interactive data visualisation( to accompany our report on Integrated Care Systems. This interactive tool provides a map of England allowing users to explore a range of health data for Integrated Care Systems(
Further interactive visualisations are published here( You can also read more about how we use modelling in our work.
Skills required Abilities
It will be essential that you can demonstrate the ability to:
oWork with large, complex and imperfect datasets.
oApply quantitative analysis methods to create insights to time and quality.
oProduce clear, well-structured and succinct written work which can be easily understood by non-technical readers.
oDraw valid conclusions that are evidence based and clear about limitations.
oPresent complex data or other findings in a way which can be easily understood by the various audiences.
oWork with colleagues to understand their requirements for quantitative analysis.
oWork co-operatively and collaboratively as part of a team to deliver outputs.
oCode proficiently in R or Python. Experience with SQL is also highly desirable.
In addition, we are looking for candidates with the following attributes:
oIntellectual curiosity, especially about using data and evidence to answer questions.
oFlexibility to make a significant contribution across a range of topics and outputs.
oStrong interest in the work of the NAO and public policy across a range of sectors.
oAttention to detail in documenting and maintaining a reliable audit trail for your work.
oDrive and determination to overcome obstacles, resistance or challenges in order to achieve goals.
oCommitment to personal development and keeping technical skills up to date
Educational requirements Education/work experience
A strong academic background. This means either:
oA minimum of a 2:1 degree in a discipline with a substantial quantitative analytical component (e.g. social research methods, economics, statistics, management science/operations research, finance, mathematics, or data analytics) and relevant experience working as an analyst, or;
oA Masters degree with a substantial quantitative or research component