IT LEAD - APPLICATIONS (Analytics & Reporting Lead)

The IT Lead - Reporting & Analytics is responsible for leading and developing a team of reporting and analytics professionals who deliver high-quality, accurate, and actionable reporting products to departments across the City, with a primary focus on Public Safety. As a key leader within the Enterprise Data Office, the IT Lead provides technical direction, strengthens business-domain understanding, and ensures that reporting solutions meet organizational needs for accuracy, accessibility, timeliness, and strategic value.

The role works in close partnership with data engineers, DBAs, and business stakeholders to expand data literacy, mature analytics practices, and promote the effective use of modern reporting technologies. The IT Lead also plays a central role in enabling and supporting self-service analytics for departmental data analysts, ensuring they have access to trusted datasets, well-designed semantic models, and consistent reporting standards. Strong leadership, communication, and analytical skills are essential, along with the ability to translate business needs into reliable, scalable reporting and dashboard solutions.

Key Responsibilities

• Team Leadership
• Lead, mentor, and develop a team of reporting and analytics professionals; build technical capability, analytical maturity, and business-domain expertise.
• Establish standards, best practices, and quality controls for report development, documentation, and delivery.
• Prioritize work, manage capacity, and ensure timely and accurate delivery of reporting products supporting Public Safety and broader citywide initiatives.
• Promote a culture of collaboration, service excellence, continuous learning, and accountability.
• Business Engagement
• Serve as point of contact for departmental reporting and analytics needs, with a strong focus on Public Safety operational and strategic requirements.
• Meet with business stakeholders to clarify their request, understand processes, KPIs, metrics; translate requirements into specifications, data models, and reporting solutions.
• Communicate timelines, risks, and design approaches in clear, accessible terms for non-technical audiences.
• Facilitate adoption of consistent definitions, shared datasets, and standardized reporting practices.
• Insight Delivery
• Enable and support self-service reporting capabilities for departmental analysts and digital champions, including the use of trusted semantic models, certified datasets, and clear documentation.
• Provide guidance and knowledge-sharing opportunities to strengthen analytics skills and support an organic digital community across departments.
• Oversee the creation, maintenance, and enhancement of high-quality reports, dashboards, statistical analyses, and analytic products using modern BI and analytics tools.
• Support advanced analytical and statistical analysis when appropriate.
• Conduct or oversee validation, peer review, and production-readiness checks to maintain data quality and high-quality data visualizations.
• Operational Excellence
• Collaborate with data engineers, DBAs, and other members of the Enterprise Data Office to ensure curated datasets, data pipelines, and analytic models meet reporting needs.
• Ensure secure access and compliance with City data governance, usage policies, and regulatory requirements.
• Troubleshoot reporting and analytics issues; support incident resolution, validation, and root-cause analysis.
• Maintain up-to-date documentation, SOPs, and guides.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

Do you have a Master’s degree?, * Prior experience leading teams, mentoring staff, or managing cross-functional reporting and analytics efforts.

• Demonstrated ability to gather requirements, document solutions, and communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Strong problem-solving skills, customer focus, and ability to manage multiple priorities in a dynamic environment.
• Ability to contribute and help grow an organic digital community composed of end users, data analysts, and departmental digital champions; supports knowledge-sharing, peer enablement, and the adoption of best practices across the City.
• 5+ years of experience in reporting, analytics, business intelligence, or related fields, including hands-on development of reports, dashboards, and curated datasets.
• Strong proficiency with modern BI tools such as Power BI, Tableau, SAS Visual Analytics, SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC), etc.
• Solid understanding of data warehousing concepts and experience working with enterprise data platforms such as SQL Server, Snowflake, SAS, Azure, AWS.
• Excellent SQL skills, including writing, optimizing, and troubleshooting complex queries for reporting and analytical use cases.
• Knowledge of SDLC, ITIL, and Agile/DevOps practices.
• Statistical analysis skills, including knowledge of descriptive statistics, forecasting, trend analysis, and model evaluation; ability to apply statistical methods to operational and analytical questions in support of data-informed decision-making.
• Proficiency with programming languages such as Python or R for automation, data cleaning, transformation, complex analysis, and integration with enterprise data platforms.

Compliance & Security Requirements:

• CJIS Certification (or ability to obtain within 90 days of hire) is mandatory.
• Must successfully pass a comprehensive background check, including criminal history, and fingerprinting per Houston Police Department and CJIS standards.
• Candidate must maintain eligibility for access to sensitive law enforcement systems and data., Requires a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Management and Information Systems (MIS) or a closely related field.

Information systems-specific technical certifications may be substituted for 1 year of either the education or the experience requirement, as applicable. Related professional Information Systems experience may be substituted for the education requirement on a year-for-year basis

EXPERIENCE

At least six (6) years of technology experience supporting applications.

A Master’s degree in Computer Science, Management and Information Systems (MIS) or a closely related field may be substituted for two years of the experience requirement.

LICENSE

There are no major sources of discomfort, i.e., essentially normal office environment with acceptable lighting, temperature, and air conditions. Significant time spent using computer display, keyboard, and mouse.

Houston, TX, is the fourth largest city in the country, with a budget of over 6 billion dollars, a workforce strong of 20,000 employees, and 23 departments with fascinating data and a wide range of questions. Houston promotes healthy and resilient communities through smart civic investments, dynamic partnerships, education, and innovation. It is a place where anyone can prosper and feel at home.

The City offers its employees various benefits, including healthcare, wellness, professional development, and an excellent pension plan (Download PDF reader). [LRI1]The Enterprise Data Office is part of the Houston IT Services department and provides city-wide services. Our four focus areas are Open Data, Data Community, Data Governance, and Modern Data Stack.