[R] Job opening at the Fed

[jhallman@frb.gov]

The Money and Reserves Analysis section in the Division of Monetary Affairs at
the Federal Reserve Board in Washington has an opening for an Information
Systems Analyst (ISA).  The job listing can be found here: 

http://careers.peopleclick.com/jobposts/Client40_FRBOG/BU1/External/281-813.htm

This is not really a statistics position, although it does involve SAS (and
possibly R, see below) programming.  Much of the daily work will be in SAS and
shell scripts, and some SQL experience would also be helpful.  The retiring
analyst we are trying to replace worked mostly in SAS, but there is quite a
lot of R (and some Splus) code in the section, and because it is a small shop
we can be flexible about how things get done.  Make no mistake, whoever
we hire for this position will have to write and maintain some SAS programs,
but it is all Basic SAS (data step, procs sql, summary, print, etc...) and not
the complicated SAS AF GUI programming. (Of course, knowing the harder stuff
won't hurt your chances.)  Part of the job consists of running and maintaining
programs that clean up and extrapolate reported data in various ways, as well
as handling problems that occur.  

Over time I am moving to put more stuff in Smalltalk, R and relational
databases, so there will be opportunities to work with those environments if
you want to.  We will consider new graduates who can plausibly claim some SAS
experience through coursework. 

This is a nice place to work, with good people and a pretty good variety of
stuff to do.  Our section usually has about 22 members, about half of them
economists and three or four each of financial analysts, information systems
analysts, and research assistant.  Since the programming part of the shop is
quite small, and the section chief is not a programmer, there is quite a bit
of scope to tailor some of your work to suit your interests.   You do have to
be able to get along with colleagues and with sometimes-clueless users.  A
sense of humor goes a long way. 

Jeff Hallman
Senior Economist