Jeff Carlson is a career civil servant with 35 years of Federal service, all with the Department of the Interior, and spent 34 of those years gaining Federal audit experience. Mr. Carlson started his career as a GS-4 co-op student auditor with Department of the Interior's Office of Inspector General in his home town of Sacramento, California, while getting his accounting degree from Chico State University in Northern California. Mr. Carlson obtained his Virginia Certified Public Accountant certification after moving to Washington, D.C., in 1991. While in Washington, D.C., Mr. Carlson worked his way up to an audit supervisor conducting programmatic reviews of the Department of the Interior's bureaus such as National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Indian Affairs, and Minerals Management Service. Mr. Carlson became the Director of Financial Audits with primary oversight responsibility of the public auditors for the financial audit of the Department of the Interior in November 2006.

In June of 2008, Mr. Carlson and his family moved to Denver, Colorado, where he was tasked with starting up the Office of the Inspector General's Energy Audits Unit, conducting energy related reviews of DOI's energy programs. Mr. Carlson became the Program Director of the Office of Natural Resources Revenue's Audit Management Program in June 2018. Jeff directs the development and implementation of strategies and policies for audit and review activities. He oversees multiple offices in Colorado, Oklahoma, and Texas.