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ASCENSION is seeking a highly analytical, detail-oriented Senior Transaction Data Analyst to support the National Institutes of Health Purchase Card Program in identifying financial, procurement, compliance, and transaction risks across a large Government Purchase Card environment.

This individual will serve as a primary analytical resource responsible for transforming monthly purchase-card transaction data into actionable risk intelligence. The analyst will evaluate transaction completeness, apply NIH business rules, identify suspicious or high-risk activity, recognize emerging purchasing patterns, support compliance reviews, and develop reporting and analytical products that help NIH protect public funds and strengthen program oversight.

The ideal candidate combines advanced data-analysis capability with financial, procurement, audit, fraud-risk, or compliance experience. The strongest candidate will be comfortable working with large transaction datasets, identifying anomalous patterns, explaining findings to nontechnical stakeholders, documenting defensible conclusions, and translating policy requirements into repeatable analytical rules.

This is not simply a dashboard-development position. The successful candidate must be capable of answering questions such as: Which transactions warrant further investigation? Why? What business rule or purchasing pattern triggered the concern? What documentation is needed to validate the transaction? Does the transaction comply with applicable purchase-card requirements? Is the issue isolated or indicative of a broader trend?

NIH operates a significant purchase-card environment consisting of approximately 950 Cardholders, 500 Card Approving Officials across 30 Institutes and Centers, more than $266 million in FY25 spend, and approximately 27,000 transactions each month. The Senior Transaction Data Analyst will therefore play an important role in helping NIH focus compliance-review resources on transactions presenting the greatest financial, regulatory, or operational risk.

Position Summary

The Senior Transaction Data Analyst will analyze NIH Government Purchase Card transaction data to support data mining, targeted compliance reviews, risk identification, reporting, and broader Purchase Card Program oversight.

The analyst will obtain or receive monthly transaction files, validate data completeness, reconcile and organize transactional information, apply established NIH business rules, develop additional risk indicators based on transaction trends and Government Purchase Card requirements, and identify transactions requiring additional review. NIH expressly requires the contractor to use a data-analysis tool and to develop analytical rules that supplement Government-provided business rules.

The analyst will work closely with program leadership, compliance reviewers, Cardholders, Card Approving Officials, and Institute/Center Purchase Card Coordinators. The position will support the development of suspicious/high-risk transaction reports, targeted review populations, program statistics, monthly reports, annual trend reporting, and dashboards or other decision-support tools.

This position requires strong judgment. Not every anomaly represents noncompliance, and not every compliant-looking transaction is necessarily low risk. The analyst must be capable of investigating patterns, testing assumptions, validating supporting information, documenting methodologies, and presenting conclusions in a manner that can withstand management, audit, and regulatory scrutiny.

What You Will Do

The Senior Transaction Data Analyst is expected to:

• Analyze approximately 27,000 NIH Government Purchase Card transactions each monthly cycle using structured data-mining and risk-analysis techniques.
• Validate incoming transaction datasets for completeness, accuracy, duplicate records, missing fields, inconsistent values, and other data-quality conditions before analysis begins.
• Reconcile transaction information received from NIH, banking systems, or authorized financial-management systems to establish reliable analysis populations.
• Apply NIH-provided business rules to purchase-card data to identify transactions warranting additional review.
• Develop supplemental risk rules, indicators, thresholds, queries, and analytical tests based on Government Purchase Card regulations, transaction patterns, historical findings, and emerging risk trends.
• Identify suspicious, unusual, potentially prohibited, split-purchase, high-dollar, high-frequency, duplicate, outlier, or otherwise high-risk transactions for further investigation.
• Score or categorize transactions using risk-based methodologies that allow compliance-review resources to focus on higher-risk activity.
• Select transactions for targeted review based on analytical results, Government business rules, trends, and professional judgment.
• Support risk-based selection of Cardholders and Card Approving Officials for comprehensive GPC file reviews.
• Analyze purchase patterns across NIH Institutes and Centers to identify recurring conditions, systemic issues, and emerging program risks.
• Review supporting transaction documentation when assigned and determine whether the information adequately supports the transaction and applicable purchase-card requirements.
• Document analytical methods, assumptions, business rules, findings, exceptions, and recommendations so analyses are reproducible and defensible.
• Maintain analytical datasets and supporting information within authorized NIH systems such as SharePoint, shared drives, and designated Government repositories.
• Develop dashboards, analytical summaries, management reports, visualizations, pivot analyses, and other decision-support products.
• Prepare transaction-risk reports identifying transactions requiring additional review or management attention.
• Generate statistics describing targeted reviews, completed reviews, findings, risk categories, noncompliance trends, and outstanding actions.
• Monitor trends across monthly transaction cycles and determine whether changes to analytical business rules or risk thresholds should be recommended.
• Participate in quarterly reviews of transaction business rules with NIH program personnel and recommend modifications based on observed results.
• Translate complex transaction data into concise findings and visual narratives suitable for Government program managers and senior stakeholders.
• Contribute data and analytical content to required monthly activity reports and annual Purchase Card Program reports.
• Support special reviews, data calls, convenience-check analyses, disputed-transaction analysis, and other ad hoc analytical requests.
• Assist with responses to potential information requests from organizations such as HHS, OMB, GAO, GSA, OIG, or NIH management when requested.
• Coordinate with compliance-review personnel to ensure analytical findings are translated into appropriate transaction-review actions.
• Protect Government financial and other nonpublic data in accordance with NIH/HHS information-security requirements.
• Communicate emerging risk patterns and significant findings promptly to the Senior Manager/Director and designated NIH personnel.
• Recommend opportunities to improve analytical workflows, reporting processes, data-quality controls, or decision-support tools.