Assistant Directors, Modellers and Economists

The PBO is seeking dynamic and motivated individuals to help us enrich Australia’s democracy through independent budget and fiscal analysis by:

• Undertaking economic research and analysis on budget and fiscal issues.
• Developing costings for policy proposals.
• Building and using models and data visualisation tools to underpin evidence-based advice, briefing material on fiscal issues, and supporting efficient internal processes.
• Writing reports and publications, such as the triennial election commitments report and educationally focused Budget Explainers.

To deliver on our mandate, we rely on professionals with diverse skills and experience who are curious and rigorous in their approach.

The PBO works in an agile and flexible way, and successful applicants can expect a mix of costings and analytical work along with contributing to model enhancement and capability building. Stakeholder engagement is central to our work and all staff contribute to this through effective client interactions and external engagement activities such as seminars and briefings for parliamentarians and their staff.

There are also regular opportunities to work on organisation-wide projects that allow staff to contribute to and lead organisational change and have significant exposure to the PBO’s Executive and agency head. After each general election, the whole of the PBO works to deliver the Election Commitments Report.

Assistant Director roles at the Parliamentary Budget Office generally involve quantitative analysis of the budget. During the lead up to and after each general election, Assistant Directors are primarily engaged in the costing of policy proposals as part of the PBO’s report of election commitments.

Duties may include:

• Supervising, guiding, and mentoring staff and providing effective leadership to small project teams
• Managing projects from the early stages through to completion
• Leading the preparation of products for external release, including costings, research reports and updates to interactive modelling tools
• Analysing data to provide insights into budget and fiscal policy settings, and communicating these insights to a variety of audiences
• Undertaking costings of revenue, expenditure and financing proposals and drafting related explanatory material and evaluations. 
• Contributing to the preparation of PBO reports and publications, including analysing budget and economic data to provide insights into budget and fiscal policy settings.
• Analysing large datasets utilising tools such as Excel, R or other statistical or programming packages and finding creative ways to visualise insights from data.
• Assisting in building and/or adapting models and frameworks to analyse the budget in effective and efficient ways.
• Applying strong written communication skills to ensure that all written products are accessible to a wide audience.
• Working across the PBO and with other organisations to obtain data, test the findings of our research and enhance our understanding of the budget.
• Contributing to organisation wide process and tool development and improvement. 
• Contributing to implementing the PBO’s annual work plan, including on organisational wide initiatives.
• Other duties as required.

Successful applicants will:

• be Australian Citizens
• hold relevant tertiary qualifications
• have the ability to work with utmost discretion and confidentiality
• have the ability to obtain and maintain a Baseline security clearance (though some staff may be given an opportunity to be sponsored for a Negative Vetting 1 clearance).

The Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) supports the Parliament by providing independent and non-partisan analysis of the budget cycle, fiscal policy and the financial implications of proposals. We do this in 3 main ways: - responding to requests made by senators and members for costings of policy proposals or for analysis of matters relating to the Australian Government’s budget - publishing a report after every election that provides transparency around the fiscal impact of the election commitments of major parties - conducting and publishing self-initiated work, including interactive tools, that enhance public understanding of budget and fiscal policy settings.