SME, Associate – Program Assistance Division (PAD)
Project: USDA Rural Development (RD) Loan Servicing
Division: Program Assistance Division (PAD)
Location: Remote, occasional travel to St. Louis or DC offices may be required.
Schedule: Monday – Friday, core Agency hours between 6:00 AM – 6:00 PM CST (8-hour workdays expected)
Overview:
USDA Rural Development (RD) is the federal government’s investment arm for rural America — providing loans, grants, and loan guarantees to expand access to housing, utilities, broadband, healthcare, and business opportunity in the communities that private markets too often overlook. The Servicing Office (SO) provides loan servicing performance and efficiency for Rural Development (RD) programs through exemplary customer service and fiscal stewardship while cultivating a highly productive workforce. The Servicing Office (SO) manages those loans from the day they close to the day they’re paid off — ensuring families stay in their homes, rural businesses keep their doors open, and communities hold on to the infrastructure investments that keep them running.
USDA RD Servicing Office is embarking on a transformational effort to increase efficiency, elevate performance, and build operational excellence across its divisions and directorates — all in service of better outcomes for its borrowers. This SME reporting to the Head of Program Assistance Division (PAD) will be responsible for the recommendation and implementation of data-driven industry best practices, KPI design, reporting, workflow optimization, and transformation.
Program Assistance Division (PAD)
The PAD supports customers and stakeholders by providing efficient and accurate responses in writing to customers, third-party, and congressional office inquiries. Ensure loan information is reported accurately to the Credit Reporting Agencies in accordance with applicable laws and regulations for all RD loan programs. Create an environment to provide extraordinary customer service by providing a help desk to assist RD Field and State Offices with loan origination and servicing inquiries.
Experience & Expertise:
• Strong proficiency in data analysis, reporting, and performance measurement related to loan servicing.
• Strong policy background.
• Reporting expertise to capture and track congressional and cross-sectional policy.
• Effective communication and written skills, including the ability to present technical information clearly to internal teams, leadership, and external stakeholders related to loan servicing operations.
• Ability to analyze large data sets to identify trends, patterns, and opportunities.
• Advanced Excel and Microsoft tools skills (pivot tables, VLOOKUP/XLOOKUP, formulas, charts).
• Experience with reporting tools (Tableau, Power BI, Qlik, etc.).
• Knowledge of workforce management concepts.
• Familiarity with loan servicing platforms used in government or private sector operations.
• SQL query experience for data extraction and manipulation.
• Ability to work cross-functionally with operations, Quality Assessment, Work Force/Flow Management, and leadership.
• Problem-solving skills and a proactive approach to improving performance.
• Understanding of customer experience metrics and root cause analysis.
• Ability to create dashboards and automated reports.
• High attention to detail and data accuracy.
• Experience with statistical analysis techniques.
