Performance Data Analyst Jobs in Chicago, IL (NOW HIRING)

Job Description: PMO Data Analyst

Location: Remote, US Only

About the Role:
MustardSeed is seeking a PMO Data Analyst to help turn project data, client artifacts, schedules,
risk logs, vendor performance history, and lessons learned into actionable insight that improves
how we plan, execute, and advise across client engagements.

This role will work closely with project managers and PMO leaders to identify trends in project
performance, quantify what causes projects to run fast or slow, and create reusable benchmarks
that can be applied across clients and industries. The PMO Data Analyst will help MustardSeed
move from individual project learnings to portfolio-level intelligence, giving our teams stronger
evidence to support planning, forecasting, vendor recommendations, and delivery decisions.
Over time, this role is also expected to help us move from mainly reporting on what already
happened toward building early-warning signals that improve projects while they are still
running.

Responsibilities include (but are not limited to):

• Analyze project schedules, baselines, actuals, milestones, and timelines to identify where
  projects gain or lose time.
• Compare schedule performance across projects, clients, industries, phases, task types,
  and engagement models.
• Identify recurring causes of schedule variance, including scope changes, approval delays,
  resource constraints, handoff issues, vendor delays, or client-side bottlenecks.
• Measure how long key decisions and approvals take to make and help quantify the cost
  of delay so that slow decisions can be identified and acted on earlier.
• Analyze supplier and vendor performance data, including cycle times, on-time delivery,
  rework rates, responsiveness, and recurring delay patterns.
• Review risk registers and issue logs to determine which risk categories most often
  materialize, which mitigation strategies are most effective, and whether risk scoring
  accurately predicts real project outcomes.
• Support critical path and dependency analysis by identifying where bottlenecks,
  handoffs, and sequencing issues create project delays.
• Build dashboards, reports, and data visualizations that help internal teams and client
  stakeholders understand project performance, risks, and forecasts.
• Design dashboards and reports so that they give project teams something useful in
  return, such as early sight of upcoming pressure points, and are used to support and
  guide delivery rather than to assign blame for missed dates.
• Develop reusable benchmarks and playbooks by client type, project size, industry,
  project phase, or service offering.
• Maintain these benchmarks and patterns as a single, reusable evidence base, keeping it
  documented and regularly reviewed so that only patterns the data continues to support
  are kept in use.
• Distinguish meaningful project performance patterns from one-off issues or data noise,
  helping teams focus on the drivers that most consistently impact schedule performance.
• Support post-project reviews by quantifying lessons learned and translating findings into
  practical recommendations for future engagements. Where the same pattern is
  confirmed across enough projects, turn these findings into reusable early-warning checks
  that flag the same risk on current and future engagements before it materializes, and
  update or retire those checks as new project data either supports or disproves them.
• Partner with project teams to improve data quality, consistency, and usability across
  project management tools and reporting processes.
• Where practical, set up repeatable or automated data feeds from project management,
  schedules, and finance tools so that performance data can be refreshed on a regular
  basis rather than pulled together manually for each report.
• Ensure that any data or benchmarks reused across clients are appropriately anonymized
  and handled in line with client confidentiality and data protection requirements.
• Help create forecasting models or early-warning indicators related to schedule risk,
  completion probability, vendor performance, or project health.
• Present findings in a clear, practical way that enables project managers, consultants, and
  leadership to make better decisions.
  

Required Qualifications:

• 3 to 6 years of experience in data analysis, project analytics, PMO reporting, project
  controls, operations analytics, supply chain analytics, business intelligence, or a related
  role.
• Strong Excel and SQL skills, including pivot tables, formulas, data cleaning, querying, and
  analysis.
• Experience with data visualization tools such as Power BI or Tableau, with the ability to
  build clear, actionable dashboards for stakeholders.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to translate data into
  clear, practical insights for project managers, client leadership, and executive-level
  stakeholders.
• Working knowledge of statistics and the ability to apply basic statistical concepts to
  identify trends, variance, and performance patterns. This includes an understanding of
  probability, ranges, and confidence levels, and an interest in probabilistic or
  reference-based forecasting methods such as Monte Carlo or reference-class
  forecasting.
  

Preferred Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree preferred in data analytics, business analytics, statistics, operations, or
  related field.
• Experience working with the data layer beneath project management platforms,
  including exported project data, connected reporting tools, or structured datasets from
  PM systems.
• Experience automating data preparation or building repeatable data pipelines, for
  example using Python or a similar tool, is an advantage.
• Exposure to Lean, Six Sigma, process improvement, forecasting, or operational
  excellence.
• Familiarity with project management concepts such as baseline vs. actuals, critical path
  method (CPM), schedule variance, milestone tracking, earned value management (EVM),
  risk registers, issue logs, and lessons learned.
• Experience with Smartsheet, MS Project, Microsoft Planner, Asana, Monday.com, Jira, or
  other project management platforms.
  
• Exposure to regulated or life sciences project environments, and the data, stage gates,
  and milestone structures used in them, is helpful but not essential.

Compensation & Benefits: Salary is commensurate with experience. We offer comprehensive benefits including a company sponsored Individual Coverage Healthcare Reimbursement Arrangement (ICHRA), 401(K), Healthcare Savings Account (HSA), Paid Time Off (PTO), Parental Leave, and paid company holidays, Additionally, MustardSeed offers robust support for our team members' professional development, employee incentives, and hands-on experience in a wide variety of projects and environments.

Additional Information: MustardSeed provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by the law. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation, and training.