Application Services Manager

Clarification from the agency

Current United States Postal Service Office of Inspector General, United States Postal Service and United States Postal Inspection Service and Postal Regulatory Commission Employees only.

This announcement provides the opportunity for a reassignment/promotion to the Application Services Manager position in the Office of Chief Information Officer (OCIO) located in Arlington, Virginia. Bring your skills and voice to our team!

Candidates will be evaluated on the skills that they possess that are directly related to the duties of the position and the experience, education and training that indicate the applicant's ability to acquire the particular knowledge and skills needed to perform the duties of the position. Only those candidates who meet all qualification and eligibility requirements and who submit the required information by 11:59 PM EST on 10/01/2026 will be considered.

The USPS OIG uses a Pay Banding system, which is equivalent to the Federal GS scale. Grade and salary determinations will be made based upon a candidate's education and professional experience.

This position is being advertised at the Manager Band level, equivalent to a GS-14. The salary range for this position is $150,610.00 - $193,790.00. The salary figures include locality pay.

Please note that the duties and responsibilities associated with this position may vary based upon the agency's needs at the time of hire. The following description of major duties and responsibilities is only intended to give applicants a general overview of the expectations.

• Technical Leadership: Responsible for innovation, security, sound architecture, and support of new or existing software. Provide authoritative oversight of cloud-based custom application development and strong governance of the overall process.
• Incident Command: Technical incident commander during critical operational outages, coordinating with peers to mobilize specialists and lead troubleshooting efforts, while managing real-time status communications to executive leadership and business stakeholders. Conduct post-incident review and plan for continuous improvement of monitoring and robust architecture.
• Delivery Governance: Oversee the production of high-quality requirements, clear user stories, and proper milestone prioritization. Baseline team velocity, identify delivery bottlenecks, and introduce process improvements to accelerate production output. Provide clear and defensible project schedules.
• IT Management: Manage hiring, onboarding, and performance accountability. Identify new technologies for continuous improvement of software development efficiency and quality. Collaborate with peers and subordinates to ensure effective, efficient, and secure products and services.
• Communications: Develop strong relationships with internal product owners. Ensure executive stakeholders have a clear understanding of the team's objectives and accomplishments particularly through the use of demos, newsletter articles, and recurring meeting formats. Make sure priorities are aligned and schedule changes are justified. Handle politically sensitive situations with customers gracefully.

Conditions of employment

• Must be a U.S. citizen
• Must be able to pass a drug screening
• Must be able to pass a background investigation
• Must be able to obtain and maintain Moderate Background Investigation security clearance
• Must be able to obtain and maintain a government-issued credit card
• May be required to successfully complete a 12-month probationary period

Qualifications

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

You must meet ALL of the minimum qualifications listed below.

• Must have technical experience directly related to applications development.

AND

• Must have at least 5 years of professional IT management experience; OR at least 3 years of project management experience combined with at least 2 years of IT management experience.

DESIRABLE QUALIFICATIONS

• Experience managing project schedules, evaluating requirements, assigning level of effort, communicating with stakeholders, and overseeing testing and deployment.
• Prior hands-on experience as a software developer or software architect.

EVALUATION FACTORS
You must have the experience, knowledge and skills as listed in EACH of the evaluation factors. Failure to demonstrate that you meet all of the evaluation factor requirements as listed below will result in a score of zero (0); an ineligible status, and you will not be referred for further consideration. Include your major accomplishments relevant to the position requirements in your resume.

Evaluation Factor 1: Software Engineering Oversight
Demonstrated ability to evaluate software design patterns, assess technical LOE, enforce code quality standards, and guide modern software development practices. You must show broad knowledge of full lifecycle software development, modern programming languages, framework architectures, database integration, and application deployment standards.

Evaluation Factor 2: Project Oversight and Communications
Demonstrated skill communicating with non-technical stakeholders, aligning expectations on milestones and scheduling, ensuring project success, and creatively mitigating project setbacks.

Evaluation Factor 3: Software Delivery Management
Demonstrated experience managing software delivery, tracking team productivity, streamlining release pipelines, and optimizing delivery speed across simultaneous project streams.

Evaluation Factor 4: Incident Response
Demonstrated experience managing routine application support and critical incident response, including overseeing support ticket assignments, ensuring customer satisfaction, and leading technical teams during software outages or system disruptions while providing status updates to leadership.


You will no longer be considered for this position if you: fail to respond to all of the questions in the self-assessment questionnaire; fail to address a factor in the narrative section (no response or "See resume" or similar language will be scored a zero (0)); or receive a zero (0) rating on any evaluation factor.

Failure to demonstrate that you meet all evaluation factor requirements will result in a score of zero (0). Upon receipt of a zero score, you will be deemed "not minimally qualified," and you will not be referred for further consideration.

How you will be evaluated

You will be evaluated for this job based on how well you meet the qualifications above.

The Human Resources Office will review your resume and supporting documentation to ensure that you meet the minimum qualifications required for this position.

You will no longer be considered for this position if you:

• Receive a zero (0) rating on any evaluation factor
• Fail to attach all required documentation
• Submit a resume that exceeds the two-page limit
• If your application materials indicate that you are not minimally-qualified for this position
• If you fail to qualify on the interview

Only the top-rated candidates will be referred to a review official or the selecting official for further consideration. Top-rated applicants may be required to participate in an interview. Your rating may be further adjusted or rated as ineligible by the review official or the selecting official based on your interview performance. Once all applicant scores are finalized, the selecting official will make a final decision. NOTE: If you receive a zero (0) rating on any evaluation factor or on the interview, you will be considered NOT MINIMALLY QUALIFIED for the position and rated ineligible.

Applicants for this position may be interviewed one or more times as part of the hiring process. During interviews, applicants may not use any AI tool or virtual assistant (such as ChatGPT) to help them answer questions, except for accessibility tools used as part of a reasonable accommodation. Applicants who fail to follow these rules will be disqualified from the hiring process.

You must submit all required documents by 11:59 PM EST on the closing date of this announcement, Vacancy Announcement 13061683, by closing date 10/01/2026.

1. RESUME - IMPORTANT UPDATE: Your resume must not exceed two (2) pages. You will no longer be considered for this announcement if your resume exceeds the two-page limit. It is essential that your resume and supporting documentation provide sufficient information to substantiate your qualifications for the announced position (categorize as "Resume"). Additional guidance on writing a federal resume can be found at: USAJOBS Help Center - How do I write a resume for a federal job?

Make sure your page margins are 0.5 inches. The recommended font styles are Sans-Serif, Calibri, Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, Open Sans, Source Sans Pro, Roboto or Noto Sans. Consider using 14-point size font for titles and 10-point for the main text in your resume. Your resume must be 5MB or less. We recommend saving and uploading your resume as a PDF to maintain formatting and number of pages. The resume builder can help you create a resume using these recommendations and uses the information in your USAJOBS profile to help you get started.

2. COMPLETE OCCUPATIONAL QUESTIONNAIRE. Click the "Apply Online" button and follow the prompts to complete the Occupational Questionnaire. (Required: You must click on "Submit My Answers" button at the end of the Questionnaire to complete this process)

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