Senior Accountant/Fiscal Analyst - 61165524

Posting number: 191491

Department: Department of Education

Division: Finance

Job classification: Senior Accountant/Fiscal Analyst

Posting type: Open

Categories: Accounting and Finance, Education

Summary

The mission of the South Carolina Department of Education is to serve students, support teachers, empower parents, and engage the community so that every student graduates prepared to reach their full potential.

The Financial Systems Analyst serves as the functional bridge between the agency’s financial operations and its enterprise technology environment. This position performs professional-level accounting, financial analysis, and financial systems support that spans both the business and technical domains. Under general supervision, the incumbent ensures that financial data flowing through the agency’s financial management platforms is accurate, compliant, and actionable — and leads efforts to improve financial reporting, analytical processes, and data quality through both traditional financial management practices and modern technology tools.

This is an intermediate-level, cross-functional role that blends governmental accounting, enterprise financial system administration, advanced data analytics, and AI-assisted workflow development in an active public-sector environment. The incumbent contributes directly to fiscal operations, financial system support, budget reporting, and agency-wide process improvement — leveraging a broad toolkit that includes enterprise financial platforms, business intelligence tools, and AI productivity applications to produce accurate, governed, and actionable fiscal data that agency leadership and central government offices rely on.

Financial Analysis & Accounting

• Perform professional-level accounting functions including journal entries, account reconciliations, budget-to-actual variance analysis, and financial report preparation in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) standards; ensure compliance with applicable SC fiscal policies, federal grant requirements, and SC Code of Laws governing the management of public funds.
• Analyze revenue and expenditure trends using a combination of financial system reporting tools, spreadsheet modeling, and business intelligence platforms; prepare ad hoc financial reports, dashboards, and data summaries to support management decision-making and legislative reporting.
• Build and maintain financial models using advanced Excel techniques (dynamic arrays, Power Query, Power Pivot, DAX formulas) and supplementary tools such as Power BI or Tableau to present fiscal data clearly for both technical and executive audiences.
• Assist in the preparation of annual budget submissions, grant financial reports, and closing packages; monitor expenditures against appropriations, identify variances, and develop forecast models to project end-of-year positions.

Financial Systems & Technology Support

• Serve as agency functional resource for the agency’s enterprise financial management system(s), supporting transaction processing, workflow routing, chart of accounts maintenance, and system access requests; coordinate issue resolution with central Information Technology (IT) staff and system vendors.
• Identify, document, and troubleshoot financial system issues across platforms; simulate or recreate errors to verify root cause; maintain system process documentation and knowledge base entries to support ongoing staff training and audit readiness.
• Work across multiple financial management platforms (e.g., ERP systems, grant management portals, procurement systems, budget tools) to ensure data consistency and integration accuracy; document data flows and interface dependencies between systems.
• Assist in the design and documentation of improved financial workflows, system configuration changes, and automated controls to reduce manual processing, strengthen internal controls, and improve the reliability of financial reporting outputs.
• Evaluate emerging financial technology tools and platforms; prepare comparative analyses and proof-of-concept assessments to inform agency technology investment decisions.

Data Analytics & Visualization

• Query, extract, and transform financial data from multiple systems using SQL, Power Query, or comparable data extraction tools; validate data integrity across sources and reconcile discrepancies between subsidiary records and the general ledger.
• Design and publish interac