Information Technology Specialist (Cloud Architect)

Clarification from the agency

This announcement is open to the public.

The incumbent is the technical authority for bridging these environments, ensuring seamless interoperability, high availability, and the extension of Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) from the local data center to the public cloud. The incumbent plays a pivotal role in managing the total lifecycle of virtualized assets, from on-premises hypervisors to cloud-native instances, ensuring a unified security and operational posture.

The duties of this position include, but are not limited to:

1. Engineering and managing enterprise on-premises virtualization platforms (e.g., VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, or Nutanix AHV) to support mission-critical legacy and modern workloads.
2. Architecting and maintaining hybrid cloud connectivity using technologies such as Azure Arc, AWS Outposts, or Google Anthos to create a unified management plane across local and public data centers.
3. Leading the migration and refactoring of workloads from on-premises virtual environments to Azure, AWS, GCP, or OCI using "lift-and-shift," "re-platforming," or "cloud-native" strategies.
4. Managing software-defined data center (SDDC) components, including virtualized networking (NSX/AVS) and storage (vSAN), to ensure high performance and hardware abstraction
5. Automating hybrid infrastructure delivery through Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools like Terraform and Ansible to provision resources consistently across on-premises and multi-cloud providers.
6. Designing cross-environment Disaster Recovery (DR) and Backup solutions that utilize cloud storage (e.g., S3, Azure Blob) as targets for on-premises virtual machine snapshots and stateful data.
7. Extending Zero Trust security models to the on-premises perimeter by implementing micro-segmentation, identity-based access, and consistent firewall policies across the hybrid fabric.
8. Optimizing compute resource allocation by monitoring hypervisor contention on-premises and right-sizing elastic instances in the public cloud to balance cost and performance.
9. Performing Tier 3 diagnostic analysis on complex "gray failure" issues, such as latency between local virtual switches and cloud VPCs, or synchronization errors in hybrid storage arrays.
10. Managing the integration of hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) with cloud-native APIs to facilitate seamless resource scaling during peak demand periods.
11. Mentoring technical staff on the convergence of traditional systems administration and cloud-native engineering, developing guides for hybrid operational excellence.
12. Ensuring federal compliance (NIST SP 800-53) across the entire stack, maintaining security controls for both physical host hardware on-premises and ephemeral resources in the cloud.
13. Performing other duties as assigned.

Conditions of employment

CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT

1. All information is subject to verification. Applicants are advised that false answers or omissions of information on application materials or inability to meet the following conditions may be grounds for non-selection, withdrawal of an offer of employment, or dismissal after being employed.
2. Selection for this position is contingent upon completion of OF-306, Declaration of Federal Employment during the pre-employment process and proof of U.S. citizenship for competitive status positions or conversion to a competitive status position with the AO. If non-citizens are considered for hire into a temporary or any other position with non-competitive status or when it is confirmed by the AO Human Resources Office there are no qualified U.S. citizens for a competitive status position (unless prohibited by a law or statue), non-citizens must provide proof of authorization to work in the U.S. and proof of entitlement to receive compensation. Additional information on the employment of non-citizens can be found at USAJOBS Help Center | Employment of non-citizens/. For a list of documents that may be used to provide proof of citizenship or authorization to work in the United States, please refer to Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification.
3. All new AO employees will be required to complete an FBI fingerprint-based national criminal database and records check and pass a public trust suitability check.
4. New employees to the AO will be required to successfully pass the E-Verify employment verification check. To learn more about E-Verify, including your rights/responsibilities, visit https://www.e-verify.gov/.
5. All new AO employees are required to identify a financial institution for direct deposit of pay before appointment.
6. You will be required to serve a trial period if selected for a first-time appointment to the Federal government, transferring from another Federal agency, or serving as a first-time supervisor. Failure to successfully complete the trial period may result in termination of employment.
7. If appointed to a temporary position, management may have the discretion of converting the position to permanent depending upon funding and staffing allocation.

Qualifications

Applicants must have demonstrated experience as listed below. This requirement is according to the AO Classification, Compensation, and Recruitment Systems which include interpretive guidance and reference to the OPM Operating Manual for Qualification Standards for General Schedule Positions.

1. Attention to Detail - Is thorough when performing work and conscientious about attending to detail.
2. 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.
3. Oral Communication - Expresses information (for example, ideas or facts) to individuals or groups effectively, considering 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.
4. Problem Solving - Identifies problems; determines accuracy and relevance of information; uses sound judgment to generate and evaluate alternatives, and to make recommendations. Ability to troubleshoot complex connectivity and performance issues that span the local data center and multiple cloud providers.

Specialized Experience: Applicants must have at least one full year (52 weeks) of specialized experience which is in or directly related to the line of work of this position. Specialized experience is demonstrated experience in ALL of the following:

1. Experience as a Subject Matter Expert in on-premises virtualization (VMware/Hyper-V) and multi-cloud engineering (Azure/AWS/GCP/OCI).
2. Managing highly technical projects as directed supporting the Cloud and VDI capability reporting status and compliance as required.
3. Coordinating and maintaining relationships with all necessary internal and external groups supporting related services.
4. Expertise in automating infrastructure across local and public data centers

Desired but not required
Familiarity with the Federal Judiciary and AO policies is a plus.

Certifications
VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Azure solutions architect
AWS solutions architect
GCP Profession cloud architect
OCI solutions architect

How you will be evaluated

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

We will review your resume and supporting documentation and compare this information to your responses on the occupational questionnaire to determine if you meet the minimum qualifications for this job. If you meet the minimum qualifications for this job, we will evaluate your application package, to assess the quality, depth, and complexity of your accomplishments, experience, and education as they relate to the requirements listed in this vacancy announcement.

You should be aware that your ratings are subject to evaluation and verification. If a determination is made that you have rated yourself higher than is supported by your resume and/or narrative responses, you will be assigned a rating commensurate to your described experience. Failure to submit the mandatory narrative responses will result in not receiving full consideration and/or rating credit. Deliberate attempts to falsify information may be grounds for not selecting you, withdrawing an offer of employment, or dismissal after being employed.

For this job announcement the following documents and/or information are required:

• Resume - Any written format you choose to describe your job-related qualifications.
• Citizenship - Include country of citizenship on resume.
• Notification of Personnel Action (SF-50) - All applicants outside of the AO must submit a copy of your latest SF-50 to verify current or former Federal employment status.
• Veterans Preference documentation - Certificate of Release or Discharge from Active Duty (DD Form 214), if applicable Application for 10-Point Veteran Preference (SF-15) and an official statement, dated 1991 or later, from the Department of Veterans Affairs or from a branch of the Armed Forces, certifying to the veteran's present receipt of compensation.

Next steps