Associate Analyst

About the Role

The Government and Infrastructure (G&I) practice of Ernst & Young LLP provides a full range of consulting and audit services to help Federal, State, Local, and Education clients implement new ideas to achieve their mission outcomes. The Service Delivery Center (SDC) is a core component of G&I, comprised of US-based resources delivering project-based work and managed services to government clients. This role is part of the SDC Risk team, aligned to the Financial Risk, Financial Crime & Grants team. This team focuses on payment-integrity, fraud-prevention, financial crime compliance, financial-risk, and grants programs for government organizations.

Key Responsibilities

• Complete assigned engagement tasks by following established procedures, timelines, quality standards, and service-level requirements.
• Support improper payment and payment-integrity testing by reviewing sampled transactions against defined testing attributes and documenting results using established workpaper standards.
• Review system-generated alerts using defined criteria and procedures, document findings, and escalate complex or potentially suspicious cases to senior team members.
• Assist with pulling, organizing, cleaning, and analyzing program and payment data using established queries, rules, and analytics routines to identify anomalies and trends.
• Support grants operations, including application intake, eligibility checks, recipient and subrecipient monitoring, financial tracking, and reporting in the EY Grants Accelerator or client grants systems.
• Compile process information, fraud risk inventories, control mappings, and other documentation to support fraud risk assessments.
• Help prepare and refresh recurring payment-integrity, grants, and financial-risk metrics reports and dashboards.
• Maintain complete and accurate evidence and documentation, and protect sensitive data and Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in accordance with engagement and client requirements.
• Use EY-approved AI and automation tools appropriately to improve accuracy, consistency, and efficiency of repeatable tasks.
• Track assigned work, communicate progress, and raise questions, risks, or issues promptly to senior team members and engagement leads.
• Participate in training, coaching, and team activities to build technical knowledge and delivery capabilities.

Skills and Attributes For Success

• Intellectual curiosity and a willingness to learn new subject matter, systems, and procedures.
• Strong attention to detail and a commitment to producing accurate, consistent work.
• Ability to follow defined procedures, apply feedback, and clearly communicate questions or issues.
• Sound judgment with sensitive data, PII, and firm-approved AI tools.
• Effective teaming and collaboration with individuals from a variety of backgrounds and skill sets.
• Foundational understanding of, or interest in learning, fraud prevention, payment integrity, financial risk, and grants compliance concepts.
• Foundational quantitative and data-analysis skills, including experience working with spreadsheets or structured data.
• Strong organizational and time-management skills.

Requirements & Tech Stack

• Bachelor's degree with an emphasis in Finance, Accounting, Economics, Mathematics, Statistics, Business or Data Analytics, Public Administration, or a related field.
• United States citizenship and the ability to obtain and maintain a public trust clearance or higher; some engagements require Secret.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to review, organize, and analyze business, financial, or technical information, manage assigned tasks, meet deadlines, and follow up on open issues.
• Flexibility and ability to work effectively with a nationally distributed team.
• Proficiency in MS Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, SharePoint).
• Ability to become proficient with Tableau or Power BI and Visio.
• Flexibility to travel up to 20%.

Ideally, you'll also have

• Coursework or exposure to fraud prevention, payment integrity, financial crime, grants administration, or government programs such as Medicaid, unemployment insurance, and SNAP.
• Experience with analytics tools such as SQL, Python, R, SAS or Alteryx.
• Interest in pursuing a relevant professional certification, such as the CPA, CFE, CAMS, CGMS or CGFM.