Job Summary

This announcement is issued under the Direct Hire Authority (DHA) to recruit for positions for which there is a critical hiring need. Selectee(s) will receive a career or career-conditional appointment in the competitive service and may be required to serve a one-year probationary period. The official title of this position is Information Technology Cybersecurity Specialist (INFOSEC) GS-2210-13/14.

Job Description

Do NOT copy and paste the duties, specialized experience, or occupational assessment questionnaire from this announcement into your resume as that will not be considered a demonstration of your qualifications for this position. Your resume must describe your work and experience, in your own words. To be considered minimally qualified for this position, you must demonstrate that you have the required competencies and experience for the respective grade level in which you are applying: BASIC REQUIREMENT: REQUIRED COMPETENCIES: Experience must be Information Technology (IT)-related; the experience may be demonstrated by paid or unpaid experience and/or completion of specific, intensive training (for example, IT certification), as appropriate.You must have IT-related experience demonstrating each of the 9 competencies listed below: Attention to Detail - Is thorough when performing work and conscientious about attending to detail. Customer Service - Works with clients and customers (that is, any individuals who use or receive the services or products that your work unit produces, including the general public, individuals who work in the agency, other agencies, or organizations outside the Government) to assess their needs, provide information or assistance, resolve their problems, or satisfy their expectations; knows about available products and services; is committed to providing quality products and services. Decision Making - Makes sound, well-informed, and objective decisions; perceives the impact and implications of decisions; commits to action, even in uncertain situations, to accomplish organizational goals; causes change. Information Management - Identifies a need for and knows where or how to gather information; organizes and maintains information or information management systems. Interpersonal Skills - Shows understanding, friendliness, courtesy, tact, empathy, concern, and politeness to others; develops and maintains effective relationships with others; may include effectively dealing with individuals who are difficult, hostile, or distressed; relates well to people from varied backgrounds and different situations Oral Communication - Expresses information (for example, ideas or facts) to individuals or groups effectively, taking into account the audience and nature of the information (for example, technical, sensitive, controversial); makes clear and convincing oral presentations; listens to others, attends to nonverbal cues, and responds appropriately. Problem Solving - Identifies problems; determines accuracy and relevance of information; uses sound judgment to generate and evaluate alternatives, and to make recommendations. Teamwork - Encourages and facilitates cooperation, pride, trust, and group identity; fosters commitment and team spirit; works with others to achieve goals. Technical Competence - Uses knowledge that is acquired through formal training or on-the-job experience to perform one's job; works with, understands, and evaluates technical information related to the job; advises others on technical issues. AND SPECIALIZED EXPERIENCE: In addition to meeting the qualification requirement listed above, you must have at least one year of specialized experience at the next lower GS-grade level (or equivalent). Specialized experience is experience that has equipped you with the particular competencies/knowledge, skills, and abilities to successfully perform the duties of the position and is typically in or related to the work of the position to be filled. Such experience is typically gained in the IT field or through the performance of work where the primary concern is IT. GS-13 You qualify at the GS-13 grade level if you have at least one (1) year of specialized experience at the GS-12 grade level (or equivalent) performing at least three of the following duties Planning and executing authorized penetration tests or red team operations against enterprise networks, web applications, cloud tenants containerized/Kubernetes workloads, or operational technology - from scoping and rules-of-engagement through exploitation and reporting; OR Performing external attack-surface reconnaissance and enumeration - Open Source Information gathering, Domain Name System (DNS)/subdomain discovery, exposed-service and credential discovery, cloud-asset and SaaS-tenant attribution - to identify realistic initial-access paths; OR Gaining and expanding access using adversary tradecraft: phishing/social engineering, credential abuse, identity-provider attack paths (role assumption, token theft, federation abuse), Active Directory exploitation, privilege escalation, and lateral movement; OR Working with infrastructure-as-code and Continuous Integration/Development (CI/CD) both as an attack surface (secrets in Terraform state or Ansible vaults, pipeline/runner compromise, supply-chain injection) and as your own tooling - provisioning offensive infrastructure repeatably via Terraform, Ansible, or comparable; OR Applying Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Large Language Model (LLM) assisted tooling to offensive workflows - automating reconnaissance, triage, source-code/configuration review, or reporting - and/or testing applications that integrate AI/Machine Learning (ML) components (prompt injection, data exfiltration via model features, model-abuse paths); OR Translating technical findings into written reports and live out-briefs that give system owners root cause, business impact, and concrete remediation; partnering with detection-engineering counterparts to validate and improve defensive coverage. GS-14 You qualify at the GS-14 grade level if you have at least one (1) year of specialized experience at the GS-13 grade level (or equivalent) performing at least three of the following duties: Serving as engagement lead for full-lifecycle red team or penetration-test operations - owning scoping, Rules of Engagement (RoE) negotiation, tradecraft selection, operator tasking, deconfliction, and final reporting - including operations against multi-account cloud estates and hybrid on-prem/cloud environments; OR Designing adversary-emulation plans that map a named or composite threat actor's Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) (e.g., MITRE ATT&CK-aligned) to a target's environment, cloud control plane, crown-jewel assets, and detection posture; OR Developing or extending custom offensive tooling, payloads, or Command & Control (C2) profiles to meet engagement objectives or defeat specific controls; contributing that tradecraft back to team capability; OR Building and running offensive automation at program scale: codifying attack infrastructure, ranges, and continuous attack-surface testing as infrastructure-as-code (e.g.,Terraform, Ansible, Packer, or comparable); defining methodology, severity rubrics, and exposure-reduction metrics; OR Integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Large Language Model (LLM) capabilities into team tradecraft - developing or governing AI-augmented recon, code-review, and reporting workflows; setting safe-use guardrails - and leading assessments of AI/Machine Learning (ML) systems as a target attack surface; OR Briefing senior executives and system owners on operation results in mission-impact terms; mentoring operators and setting tradecraft, automation, and Operational Security (OPSEC) standards for the team. Experience refers to paid and unpaid experience, including volunteer work done through National Service programs (e.g., Peace Corps, AmeriCorps) and other organizations (e.g., professional; philanthropic; religious; spiritual; community, student, social). Volunteer work helps build critical competencies, knowledge, and skills and can provide valuable training and experience that translates directly to paid employment. You will receive credit for all qualifying experience, including volunteer experience. All qualification requirements must be met by the closing date of this announcement.