Example Job Description
Director of Data and Analytics
A district leader who converts governed data into trustworthy analysis, reusable products, and decision support while making limitations and risk visible.
Interview Planning Resource
Possible Interview Q&A: Director of Data and Analytics
How to use this resource: Select questions that measure competencies established through the district’s current job analysis. Ask candidates the same predetermined questions under comparable conditions and evaluate responses against the same job-related criteria.
The indicators below describe evidence a strong response may contain; they are not required scripts or the only acceptable answers.
- How would you establish priorities and a practical annual work plan for enterprise data platforms, pipelines, semantic models, dashboards, reports, analytics, and decision-support products?
Strong response indicators: Connects district goals and user needs to risk, dependencies, capacity, owners, milestones, service measures, communication, and review rather than producing an unranked project list.
- Describe a time you found that a familiar process or report was producing unreliable results. How did you investigate and correct it?
Strong response indicators: Defines the expected result, traces evidence to authoritative sources, distinguishes symptoms from root causes, involves accountable owners, tests the correction, reconciles downstream effects, documents decisions, and monitors recurrence.
- You encounter a high-profile dashboard or analysis whose definition, lineage, or interpretation is disputed. What would you do first, and how would you manage the issue through resolution?
Strong response indicators: Protects people and continuity, establishes scope and authority, preserves evidence, engages the right owners, communicates proportionately, documents decisions, verifies recovery or correction, and completes a lessons-learned review.
- How would you work with cabinet, program owners, school leaders, educators, analysts, data stewards, technology teams, researchers, and community audiences when they disagree about priorities or the acceptable level of risk?
Strong response indicators: Clarifies decision rights and shared purpose, surfaces evidence and constraints, distinguishes requirements from preferences, documents options and residual risk, facilitates a timely decision, and escalates through established authority when needed.
- What controls would you put in place before making a significant change to enterprise data platforms, pipelines, semantic models, dashboards, reports, analytics, and decision-support products?
Strong response indicators: Includes requirements, ownership, risk and privacy review, representative testing, accessibility where relevant, approvals, change communication, rollback or contingency, validation, monitoring, documentation, and support readiness.
- How would you decide what to automate and what should retain meaningful human review?
Strong response indicators: Selects stable, repeatable, testable work for automation; preserves human authority for exceptions and consequential judgments; addresses access, logging, bias or error, monitoring, failure recovery, documentation, and periodic reassessment.
- How would you explain a serious technical, instructional, operational, or data concern to a leader who does not work in your specialty?
Strong response indicators: States the affected people and services, evidence, uncertainty, consequence, deadline, accountable owners, options, recommendation, residual risk, and next update in plain language.
- What would you do when a request exceeds business ownership, research approval, privacy and security authority, policy decisions, and executive interpretation of evidence?
Strong response indicators: Recognizes the limit, avoids unauthorized action, clarifies the legitimate need, preserves service where possible, routes the decision to the authorized owner, documents the handoff, and follows through without abandoning the requester.
- How would you protect confidential information while still providing useful service and appropriate access?
Strong response indicators: Applies purpose limitation, minimum necessary access, role-based permissions, secure transmission and storage, approved retention, understandable communication, auditability, timely removal, and incident escalation.
- How would you build staff capability so your office does not become the permanent fixer of every problem?
Strong response indicators: Uses clear ownership, role-based training, usable procedures, coaching, feedback loops, office hours, communities of practice, quality reports, cross-training, and measures whether source practices improve.
- What evidence would you use to determine whether your work is improving data-product reliability, quality, adoption, decision usefulness, time to insight, reuse, equity, risk, and reduced manual reporting?
Strong response indicators: Uses a balanced set of outcome, implementation, service, risk, equity, and user-experience measures; disaggregates appropriately; explains limitations; establishes baselines and review cadence; and changes course when evidence warrants.
- What would you prioritize during your first 90 days?
Strong response indicators: Would inventory critical products and commitments, meet decision owners, review definitions and lineage, assess team capacity and technical debt, and prioritize a reliable analytics roadmap; listens before redesigning, identifies urgent risks, delivers credible early improvements, and creates an achievable longer-term roadmap with owners and measures.
Position Description
Under the direction of the appropriate district administrator, the Director of Data and Analytics directs district data engineering, analytics, business intelligence, reporting, data-product, and decision-support services.
The position connects policy, people, process, information, and technology; establishes repeatable practices; makes unresolved risk visible; and supports continuous improvement without displacing the authority of designated program, legal, privacy, security, fiscal, instructional, or executive decision-makers.
Reports To
Illustrative reporting relationship: Chief Data Officer, Chief Information Officer, research and evaluation executive, or other designated administrator. Insert the school district’s approved reporting relationship here.
Required Education and Credentials
Required
- Master's degree in data science, statistics, information systems, research, economics, public policy, education, or a related field.
- No specific credential is universally required; relevant professional certifications are preferred.
- Successful completion of all district-required employment clearances and assigned privacy, security, accessibility, records, and safety training.
Preferred
- Graduate study, advanced coursework, or current professional learning directly related to the position’s assigned scope.
- Relevant training in project management, facilitation, change management, data-informed improvement, and public-sector service.
Required / Desired Experience
Required Experience
- Progressively responsible experience leading analysts, data engineers, business intelligence, reporting, research, or enterprise data programs.
- Experience coordinating deadline-driven work with multiple departments, users, or school sites.
- Experience handling confidential information and documenting decisions, exceptions, and completed work.
Desired Experience
- Experience with K-12 data, modern data platforms, semantic models, data governance, privacy-aware analytics, visualization, advanced methods, and product management.
- Experience developing procedures, training users, improving processes, and supporting continuity during staff or system changes.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities
Analytics Strategy and Portfolio
- Develop a prioritized analytics and data-product roadmap tied to district decisions, service needs, risk, capacity, and measurable value.
- Establish intake, discovery, prioritization, ownership, service levels, release, support, review, and retirement practices.
- Partner with leaders and users to define questions, decisions, audiences, measures, limitations, and success criteria.
Data Platforms and Products
- Direct development of governed pipelines, models, semantic layers, dashboards, reports, extracts, and reusable analytical assets.
- Ensure products display authoritative definitions, provenance, refresh status, limitations, suppression, accessibility, and contacts.
- Coordinate platform architecture, performance, testing, deployment, monitoring, documentation, and technical-debt reduction.
Analysis and Responsible Use
- Lead descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, evaluation, and other analyses appropriate to approved purpose and evidence.
- Establish peer review, reproducibility, subgroup-impact review, human oversight, and monitoring for consequential models and analytics.
- Prevent misleading comparisons, unsupported causal claims, small-cell disclosure, and automation beyond approved authority.
Leadership and Service Improvement
- Supervise analysts, engineers, developers, vendors, budgets, contracts, and professional development.
- Build self-service capability through governed datasets, documentation, training, office hours, and communities of practice.
- Report product health, adoption, value, risk, and unresolved decisions; perform other related duties consistent with classification.
Required Skills and Abilities
Knowledge of
- Analytics strategy, data products, dimensional and semantic modeling, warehouses or lakehouses, integration, SQL, visualization, statistics, and reproducible analysis
- K-12 instructional, assessment, accountability, enrollment, attendance, special-program, finance, HR, and operational data
- Data governance, metadata, lineage, quality, privacy, security, suppression, ethical analysis, responsible AI, and research governance
- Product management, user research, agile delivery, team leadership, vendor management, communication, and value measurement
Ability to
- Translate consequential decisions into well-scoped analytical questions, products, definitions, and acceptance criteria
- Build trustworthy, maintainable products with visible provenance, limitations, owners, freshness, and support expectations
- Select methods appropriate to the question and avoid causal, predictive, or subgroup claims unsupported by evidence
- Lead multidisciplinary teams and balance urgent reporting with sustainable platform improvement
- Explain uncertainty and tradeoffs clearly to executives, practitioners, and public audiences
- Retire duplicative or low-value reporting and measure whether products change decisions or services
Work Environment
- Work is performed primarily in district offices, schools, meeting rooms, training environments, and other computer-based professional settings, with remote participation as authorized.
- The position requires extended computer use and detailed review of records, systems, reports, procedures, communications, or technical documentation.
- Work involves frequent coordination with cabinet, program owners, school leaders, educators, analysts, data stewards, technology teams, researchers, and community audiences.
- The employee may encounter competing priorities, interruptions, confidential matters, fixed deadlines, and time-sensitive problems requiring calm, documented judgment.
- Workload may increase during school opening and closing, reporting cycles, audits, major changes, incidents, and other critical district operations.
Other Requirements
- Successfully complete required criminal-record, fingerprint, and employment clearances.
- Complete a tuberculosis risk assessment and any examination required by applicable law or district policy.
- Complete district-required cybersecurity, privacy, accessibility, nondiscrimination, workplace-safety, and records-management training.
- Maintain professional confidentiality and comply with district policies governing records, information security, acceptable technology use, conflicts of interest, and data access.
- Travel between district offices, schools, meetings, training locations, and professional-development activities as assigned.
- Possess a valid California driver’s license and maintain insurability when driving is an essential function of the position.
- Occasionally work evening, weekend, or extended hours during critical operations, incidents, deadlines, public meetings, or system transitions.
- Regularly sit, stand, walk, speak, hear, read, and operate computers and standard office equipment; occasionally lift, carry, or move records, equipment, or supplies weighing up to 25 pounds.
- Perform the essential functions of the position with or without reasonable accommodation.