Job Description

Work Location and Schedule

The SFPUC offers a hybrid, flexible work schedule. Employees of the Financial Planning team work in-office at the SFPUC’s headquarters at 525 Golden Gate Avenue, San Francisco 4 days per week (chosen by the employee), but may work from home other day(s). While staff are encouraged to meet these requirements to promote collaboration, accommodations are available for alternative arrangements as allowed by the City’s Family Friendly Work Ordinance upon review/approval.

Financial Planning & Rates Team Summary

The SFPUC’s Financial Planning & Rates team plays a critical role in financial decision-making for all the SFPUC’s Water, Power, and Sewer utilities. Part of the centralized Financial Services Bureau and the Financial Strategy Division, Financial Planning & Rates is responsible for developing the agency’s annual 10-Year Financial Plans, setting all utility rates and fees according to cost-of-service principles, developing all agency revenue budgets, and providing as-needed financial forecasts for management and the public. This interdisciplinary team develops financial analyses, administers the implementation of new processes and programs, and succinctly presents technical data to various audiences. The Financial Planning & Rates team is a great fit for people who are interested in tackling challenging, complex problems and playing an important part in sound decision-making to meet the SFPUC’s environmental, strategic planning, capital finance, budget, affordability, and customer service goals.

Position Summary

The Data and Forecasting Manager is a new position created to address a growing need for the agency to perform advanced statistical analyses, process and manage very large datasets of customer billing information, and generally provide professional-quality forecasts to support the increasing complexity of the agency’s financial modelling and rate-setting. The Data and Forecasting Manager will report to the Financial Planning Director and are one of two managers within the Financial Planning and Rates team, alongside the Rates Manager.

This person will have the most technical role on the Financial Planning & Rates team. They are expected to have a strong foundation in data science, econometrics, and statistical methods. This includes a familiarity with the principles of database design and related IT infrastructure. As needed, the SFPUC’s IT and Strategy, Innovation, and Change teams will provide technical support for the implementation and design of the required data platforms and infrastructure necessary to support their work.

Because this is a new position in an emerging area, the selected candidate will have an opportunity to build out the role and will have substantial ownership to set priorities and propose projects to meet the agency’s needs. While by no means exhaustive, the following two examples highlight projects and functions where the Data and Forecasting Manager is expected to play a key role:

1. Beginning in the last few years, the Rates team now sets rates for the Power Enterprise, both Hetch Hetchy Power (a municipal utility) and CleanPowerSF (a Community Choice Aggregator). Power rates are extraordinarily complex, requiring analyzing massive amounts of data (ex. 15-minute interval meter reads for 400,000 customer accounts for a year). This data has previously been managed by consultants in large offsite data warehouses, and currently SFPUC staff do not have the skillset needed to manage and analyze it in-house. As the Power Enterprise’s customer base continues to expand, it is critical that the SFPUC be able to offer the advanced technical analysis to ensure that rates and financial investments meet the city’s climate goals, comply with significantly increasing regulatory requirements (ex. a requirement to offer power rates that change in real time to drive customer demand response), and meet the high level of customer service and reliability expected of a modern power utility.
2. The SFPUC is faced with making major strategic financial decisions over a 20-50 year planning horizon that have billions of dollars of impact, and the Financial Planning team is increasingly being asked to provide analysis to support these decisions. For example, the team needs to forecast utility sales volumes to support decisions around what level of capital investments are needed in the long-term horizon to ensure the system meets expected population growth, while balancing the risk of incurring costs for existing customers today for future residents who may not materialize. Accurate financial forecasting and efficient planning today could save San Franciscans millions of dollars, while ensuring the agency complies with environmental goals, contractual obligations, and regulatory mandates.

Finally, the Data and Forecasting Manger will directly supervise two existing analysts and work collaboratively with the entire Financial Planning and Rates team to train and develop relevant skills in-house and support sustainable, long-term personnel growth.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

1. Develops and maintains data warehouse of financial, billing, and customer usage information which will be a centralized source to pull into all Financial Planning team reporting, forecasting, and modelling
2. Coordinates with SFPUC IT and Strategy, Innovation, and Change teams to identify and implement new technologies required to automate and streamline data analysis
3. Leads modelling and forecasting of sales volumes, revenues, and expenses for Water, Power, and Sewer Enterprises in the agency’s Quarterly Budget Reports and 10 Year Financial Plan
4. Develops annual revenue forecasts and set budgets for the SFPUC’s three Enterprises and utility expense budgets for all other City departments
5. Performs statistical or econometric analyses as needed to improve forecasting reliability, both for standalone projects and ongoing working financial and rate models
6. Prepare data visualizations to communicate results of their analyses with internal and external stakeholders
7. Coordinates with Rates Manager to provide data and analyses for cost of service and rate studies for retail and wholesale customers of the SFPUC
8. Coordinates and tracks responses to all Financial Planning’s data requests, surveys, and performance metrics to implement standardized and centralized reporting
9. Serves as Finance representative for implementation of utility rates in billing system by SFPUC’s IT team and external consultants
10. Manages two analysts directly, and provides training for other members of the Financial Planning and Rates team to build out advanced data and statistical skills within the team
11. Performs other duties as assigned.

Qualifications

_ Applicants must meet the minimum qualification requirement by the final filing date unless otherwise noted._

Possession of a baccalaureate degree from an accredited college or university and seven (7) years of full-time equivalent experience performing professional level analytical work. Qualifying professional-level analytical work includes analysis, development, administration, and reporting in major programs and functions of an organization in the areas of budgets, contracts, grants, policy, or other functional areas related to the duties of positions in the 182X Class series.

Substitution:

Possession of a graduate degree (Master's degree or higher) from an accredited college or university with major coursework in specialized subject matter areas such as public or business administration, management, business law, contract law, public policy, urban studies, economics, statistical analysis, finance, accounting or other fields of study closely related to the essential functions of positions in the Class series may be substituted for one (1) year of required experience.

Additional experience as described above may be substituted for the required degree on a year-for-year basis (up to a maximum of 2 years). Thirty (30) semester units or forty-five (45) quarter units equal one year.

Special Condition:

Three (3) years of qualifying experience in database modeling and design.

Desired Qualifications: The stated desirable qualifications may be considered at the end of the selection process when candidates are referred for hiring.

• Experience performing economic and statistical analysis, including forecasting or data science
• Experience with cost-of-service analysis or utility rate-setting for water, power, or sewer
• Experience managing or leading teams of analysts, and mentoring/training co-workers in technical areas
• Familiarity with the City of San Francisco’s financial system, PeopleSoft Financials or the SFPUC’s customer billing system, Oracle Customer Care & Billing (CC&B)
• Interest in the SFPUC’s mission and the use of utility rates and financial planning to support environmental and social goals

Every application is reviewed to ensure that you meet the minimum qualifications as listed in the job ad. Please review our articles on Employment Application and Minimum Qualifications and Verification of Experience and/or Education for considerations taken when reviewing applications.

Applicants may be required to submit verification of qualifying education and experience at any point during the recruitment and selection process.

Note : Falsifying one’s education, training, or work experience or attempted deception on the application may result in disqualification for this and future job opportunities with the City and County of San Francisco.

All work experience, education, training and other information substantiating how you meet the minimum qualifications must be included on your application by the filing deadline. Information submitted after the filing deadline will not be considered in determining whether you meet the minimum qualifications. Applications completed improperly may be cause for ineligibility, disqualification or may lead to lower scores.

Additional Information

Additional Information Regarding Employment with the City and County of San Francisco:

• Information About the Hiring Process
• Conviction History
• Employee Benefits Overview
• Equal Employment Opportunity
• Disaster Service Worker
• ADA Accommodation
• Veterans Preference
• Right to Work
• Copies of Application Documents
• Diversity Statement

Applicants will receive a confirmation email from notification@careers.sf.gov that their online application has been received in response to every announcement for which they file. Applicants should retain this confirmation email for their records. Failure to receive this email means that the online application was not submitted or received.

HOW TO APPLY

Applications for City and County of San Francisco jobs are only accepted through an online process. Visit https://careers.smartrecruiters.com/CityAndCountyOfSanFrancisco1/ and begin the application process.

• Select the “I’m Interested” button and follow instructions on the screen

Applicants may be contacted by email about this recruitment and, therefore, it is their responsibility to ensure that their registered email address is accurate and updated. Also, applicants must ensure that email from CCSF is not blocked on their computer by a spam filter. To prevent blocking, applicants should set up their email to accept CCSF mail from the following addresses (@sfgov.org, @sfdpw.org, @sfport.com, @flysfo.com, @sfwater.org, @sfdph.org, @asianart.org, @sfmta.com, @sfpl.org, @dcyf.org, @first5sf.org, @famsf.org, @ccsf.edu, @smartalerts.info, and @smartrecruiters.com).

Applicants will receive a confirmation email from notification@careers.sf.gov that their online application has been received in response to every announcement for which they file. Applicants should retain this confirmation email for their records. Failure to receive this email means that the online application was not submitted or received.

Job Analyst Information: If you have any questions regarding this recruitment or application process, please contact the job analyst, Sanly Guan at Sguan@sfwater.org

The City and County of San Francisco encourages women, minorities and persons with disabilities to apply. Applicants will be considered regardless of their sex, race, age, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition (associated with cancer, a history of cancer, or genetic characteristics), HIV/AIDS status, genetic information, marital status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, military and veteran status, or other protected category under the law.