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.

The Research and Insights Solution Center (RISC) is the chief data and research component of the OIG, comprised of data scientists, data analysts, programmatic subject matter experts, geographic information system professionals, data engineers, research specialists, economists, and public policy analysts. Our analytics group offers the opportunity to drive value to the organization by designing and developing analytical solutions for auditors, investigators, and researchers.

The RISC analytics group is currently seeking an experienced Data Scientist - AI Engineer who will be responsible for researching, assessing, evaluating, and realizing useful and valuable emerging technologies and techniques that can progress the analytic and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities and offerings across OIG. This position will provide thought leadership for RISC, in enabling data science work that requires application of data mining techniques, model development, statistical analysis, predictive analytics, text analytics, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and other emerging technologies, to support OIG's oversight of USPS through audits, white papers, and investigations. Bring your skills and voice to our team!

NOTE: This is a TERM appointment, with an initial term of two years, with the possibility of three additional extensions of up to one-year each. The position may be extended further without competition.

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 06/11/2026 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 Journey Band level, equivalent to a GS-11 - GS-13. The salary range for this position is $85,447.00 - $158,322.00. The salary figures include locality pay. Promotion potential to a GS-13 is at management's discretion.

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.

The following description of major duties and responsibilities is only intended to give applicants a general overview of the expectations.

• Infrastructure Tooling & Engineering: Develops scalable infrastructure tooling and cloud-based engineering workflows to support the automated, reproducible deployment of analytics and artificial intelligence pipelines.
• Graph Architecture Integration: Designs, implements, and maintains the core graph database ecosystem, focusing on relationship mapping to uncover hidden networks and anomalies within complex datasets.
• Generative AI & LLM Customization: Directs the integration, prompt engineering, orchestration, and fine-tuning of commercial and open-source Large Language Models (LLMs) to optimize the extraction of structured data from unstructured formats.
• Model Validation & MLOps Monitoring: Builds shared validation tools and operational systems to track machine learning model performance, detect data drift, and address live deployment anomalies.
• Software Engineering Standards: Applies rigorous modern software engineering practices, including continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines, to govern the end-to-end model lifecycle.
• Algorithmic Product Creation: Architects advanced analytics products and writes specialized software code to implement complex analytical frameworks targeted at priority organizational objectives.
• Testing, Safety, & Compliance: Executes comprehensive testing protocols for AI integrations to ensure full compliance with performance baselines, security controls, and federal alignment standards.
• Community Upskilling & Planning: Partners with internal leadership to perform training needs assessments and execute strategic workforce development plans that build code-driven analytics capabilities across the agency.
• Emergent Technology Prototyping: Researches the frontiers of data science, commercial APIs, and knowledge management to perform rapid prototyping and rigorous experimentation on novel technical workflows.
• Cross-Functional Synergy & Adoption: Facilitates collaborative project delivery across technical boundaries, coordinates with external providers, and creates accessible user documentation to accelerate system adoption.

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.

• Bachelor's degree from an accredited college or university in Computer Science, Data Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics, or a closely related quantitative field.

AND

• Applicants must have one (1) year of specialized experience equivalent to the next lower grade level demonstrating the following technical competencies:

1. Programming for AI/Data Science: Experience using modern programming languages standard to data science and AI engineering (Python required; experience with SQL, Scala, or Rust is a plus) to build data pipelines and integrate analytics applications.
2. Generative AI & LLM Frameworks: Experience developing, configuring, or integrating machine learning models and Large Language Model (LLM) orchestration frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LlamaIndex, Hugging Face, or commercial AI APIs like Azure OpenAI).
3. Enterprise Data & Tooling workflows: Experience utilizing collaborative notebooks, cloud-native platforms, or data management tools (e.g., Databricks, Jupyter, Copilot Studio, or Gemini) for experiment tracking, workflow automation, or model management.
4. Relationship & Graph Data Structures: Practical, hands-on experience utilizing or configuring graph databases (e.g., Neo4j, Memgraph) or relational database architectures to map and analyze complex data connections.

DESIRABLE QUALIFICATIONS

• Knowledge of the U.S. Postal Service
• Experience in web app development utilizing front and back-end languages, libraries, and frameworks (e.g. HTML5/CSS, JavaScript, Typescript, jQuery, Bootstrap, Angular, Flask, Django, REST/SOAP APIs)
• Experience with and an understanding of DevOps pipelines and familiarity with the principles of continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) practices
• Practical experience with cloud platforms such as Azure (preferred), AWS, or GCP

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.

• Business Requirements & ML Translation: Ability to capture complex business requirements and adeptly transform raw organizational data into production-ready machine learning solutions, visualizations, interactive dashboards, and executive presentations.
• LLM Orchestration & RAG Frameworks: Skill in building and scaling Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) architectures using orchestration frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LlamaIndex) and vector databases to safely connect commercial or open-source LLMs to enterprise data sources.
• Model Selection & API Integration: Knowledge of commercial AI APIs (e.g., Azure OpenAI) and open-source foundation models (e.g., Llama, Mistral), with the ability to evaluate model trade-offs regarding context window constraints, latency, cost, and hosting infrastructure.
• Advanced Programming & Core Tooling: Mastery of Python programming and analytical toolsets (e.g., Databricks, Neo4j, Power BI) to manage data engineering pipelines, implement advanced prompt engineering techniques, and enable function calling/agentic workflows.
• LLM Evaluation, Guardrails, & Security: Skill in implementing validation frameworks to evaluate model outputs for accuracy, bias, and faithfulness (mitigating hallucinations), alongside deploying safety guardrails, alignment techniques, and data privacy controls.
• Pipeline Automation & Scalability: Ability to design, implement, and maintain scalable, reliable, and secure data pipelines and MLOps architectures using containerization and continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) workflows.
• Technical Communications & Briefings: Strong ability to provide structured technical briefings, white papers, and presentations both orally and in writing to clearly communicate complex AI products, model limitations, and strategic recommendations to executives, technical peers, and law enforcement components.
• Agile Frameworks & LLMOps Delivery: Ability to set goals, prioritize project backlogs, and deliver high-quality code in an efficient manner applying Agile, DevOps, or LLMOps practices for model monitoring and continuous integration/deployment (CI/CD).

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 12970974, by closing date 06/11/2026.

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)

3. TRANSCRIPTS from an accredited college or university. The information presented in the transcript must be verifiable and should contain the name of the institution, applicant's name, list of completed courses, semester hours, GPA, date and type of Bachelor's Degree issued. Education completed outside the United States must be deemed equivalent to that gained in conventional/accredited U.S. education programs to be acceptable for Federal employment. Attach document verifying that it has been deemed equivalent. For further information visit: http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ous/international/usnei/us/edlite-visitus-forrecog.html. (Required: Upload and save as "Transcript" document.)

4. PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL dated within the last 15 months. This is required from all applicants including Federal, USPS, OIG, and private sector employees. If a PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL is not available, you must submit a separate statement with the reason a performance appraisal is not available. (Required: Upload and save as "Performance Appraisal" document.) NOTE: An SF-50 IS NOT acceptable as a performance appraisal.

Next steps