Fish Program Budget Analyst - Budget Analyst 4 (In-Training) - Permanent - *02239-25

About the position

As the senior budget analyst for the Fish Science Division, this role provides expert analysis and strategic recommendations on complex financial matters, ensuring effective management of a ~$32 million operating budget. This position plays a key role in supporting senior leadership by developing fiscal notes, decision packages, and allotments, while also creating processes and procedures to enhance budget and contract management.

Responsibilities

• Serve as a Division expert to provide technical assistance to internal and external customers regarding highly complex budget, financial, and operational activities that result in improvements within the Fish Science Division.
• Exercise discretion and independent judgment, conduct in depth analyses/evaluation and provide recommended actions to identify and address issues, problems and opportunities related to Fish Science Division budget, financial, and/or business operations to internal and external constituents and manage implementation of changes for program effectiveness.
• Develop and integrate best budget and financial practices and monitoring into existing processes.
• Assist Fish Science Division staff in the design, development, analysis, monitoring and maintenance of complex monitoring tools for budget and financial management.
• Ensure Division budget and financial operations are conducted in a manner that is timely, efficient, effective, and in compliance with agency policies and state and federal laws by implementing work plans to meet requirements of policies and laws.
• Monitor, interpret, prioritize and implement budget and operational policies and procedures for the deployment of Division budget and operational functions.
• Ensure that Fish Program executive management and other internal and external stakeholders are provided with accurate, timely and credible information to assist them in making budget and policy decisions that affect areas of Fish Science Division business operations both internally and externally.
• Lead the development and production of budget and financial reports, addressing complex and sometimes unprecedented budget, financial, and operational issues.
• Research and analyze expenditure patterns, organizational structure, and applicable state and federal regulations for issues requiring specific fiscal and operational expertise.
• Create presentation documents outlining the Division's operational challenges and proposed solutions.
• Assist subject matter experts with the development of policy level decision packages.
• Write maintenance level decision packages after analyzing expenditure data.
• Work with subject matter experts to develop accurate and timely allotments, cost estimates, and fiscal notes.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in business, public administration, accounting, economics, statistics, or relevant field and three (3) years of professional experience in budget, accounting, finance, or public administration.
• Master's degree in business, public administration, accounting, economics, statistics, or relevant field and one (1) year of professional experience in budget, accounting, finance, or public administration.
• Current or recent experience as a Budget Analyst 2.
• Bachelor's degree in business, public administration, accounting, economics, statistics, or relevant field and four (4) years of budget experience, including one (1) complete biennial cycle, with increasing levels of responsibility.
• Master's degree in business, public administration, accounting, economics, statistics, or relevant field and two (2) years of budget experience, including one (1) complete biennial cycle, with increasing levels of responsibility.
• Current or recent experience as a Budget Analyst 3.

Nice-to-haves

• A master's degree in business, public administration, accounting, economics, or statistics.
• Fiscal Office or Contracts Office experience.
• Three (3) years of State budget experience (which includes at least one complete biennial cycle) with increasing levels of responsibility.
• Experience in consistently following applicable budget guidelines, WDFW policies, state and federal regulations, and budget principles and standards.
• Experience in conducting sound and detailed analyses from both a programmatic and fiscal perspective.
• Experience in practicing collaborative problem solving, maintaining open communication among staff, and allowing flexibility for creative and innovative input from others.
• Experience in communicating complex budget issues orally and in writing to a variety of audiences and providing training and guidance on these issues.