Operations Research Analysts
Formulate and apply mathematical modeling and other optimizing methods to develop and interpret information that assists management with decision making.
Salary distribution (US)
Real salary data from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The p10–p90 spread tells you more than the median alone.
Top skills
Knowledge you'll build
- Mathematics
- Computers and Electronics
- English Language
- Administration and Management
- Engineering and Technology
- Customer and Personal Service
- Education and Training
- Economics and Accounting
A day in the life
You start your morning defining the objective function for an optimization problem a logistics director dropped on your desk yesterday, sketching constraints on a notepad before moving to code. Your day revolves around building mathematical models in tools like CPLEX, Gurobi, or Python's SciPy, running simulations to test scenarios, and interpreting results that will inform decisions about staffing schedules, supply-chain routes, or resource allocation. You meet regularly with operations managers and executives to understand their pain points, translate business problems into quantitative frameworks, and present your findings in language they can act on. The satisfaction of proving that your model saves the company millions is immense, but the challenge is that real-world data is messy and stakeholders sometimes resist recommendations that upend their intuition.
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