Centers of Excellence - Site Reliability/DevOps Engineer

Centers of Excellence (COE) is hiring for GS-15 - Site Reliability/DevOps Engineer. This page contains information related to the role as well as a link to submit your application. Check out Join TTS Hiring Process to learn more about the application process.

Location: Washington, DC

Salary Range: The base salary range for this position is: GS-15 Step 1 - $142,701 to GS-15 Step 10 $170,800

The base salary range does not include any adjustment for locality. Your locality will be determined by where you live since most of our positions are remote. If the position isn’t remote, then your locality will be determined by the location of the office where the position is based.

You can find more information about this in the compensation and benefits section on our site.

For specific details on locality pay, please visit OPM’s Salaries & Wages page or for a salary calculator OPM’s 2020 General Schedule (GS) Salary Calculator.

Please note the maximum salary available for the GS pay system is $170,800

Note: You may not be eligible for the maximum salary as it is locality dependent. Please refer to the maximum pay for your locality.

Who May Apply: All United States citizens and nationals (residents of American Samoa and Swains Islands) and applicants must not be GSA employees or contractors

Role Summary:

Site Reliability/DevOps Engineer - GS-15

We are looking for a Site Reliability/DevOps Engineer to join the IT Modernization Centers of Excellence (CoE) to help develop the capabilities and services of our partner agencies.

In collaboration with agency stakeholders, you will be providing engineering and technical leadership for the design, planning, development, and delivery of critical applications on cloud-native microservices architectures that will drive optimizations and improvements in the security, agility, responsiveness, and capital efficiency of their DevSecOps environment.

You will need a thorough knowledge of cloud, CI/CD, containerization, version control systems, configuration management tools, infrastructure as code, and effective monitoring to ensure that the agency’s DevSecOps architecture meets their current and future needs in an efficient, sustainable, agile, and adaptable manner.

Key Objectives

Key objective #1: Operate CoE and agency DevOps environments with high standards of performance and reliability:

-Define key success metrics for CoE and agency DevOps infrastructure and drive improvement toward those measures -Create and improve monitoring systems to collect data about the application, notify on any errors, and improve visibility/observability into application behavior. -Assist application teams in deploying code to the application regularly and as automatically as possible -Lead incident response and mitigate site errors as they occur -Lead postmortem discussions and drive continuous improvement to prevent similar outages -Participate in oncall shifts, serving as first-line support for incidents. Drive down page frequency as low as possible. (We currently page ~1-2 times per month.)

Key objective #2: Build CoE and agency DevOps infrastructure using modern cloud infrastructure techniques:

-Deploy and maintain CI/CD pipelines across multiple CoE and agency DevOps environments -Deploy and maintain critical applications on cloud-native microservices architecture -Use infrastructure-as-code (currently, but not limited to, Terraform) and configuration management (currently, but not limited to, Chef) to automate CoE and agency DevOps AWS, Azure, and/or Google Cloud infrastructure -Review code and consult with other engineers on new features and their implications for site performance, reliability, and security for the security of CoE and agency DevOps environments -Conduct load tests to ensure the application is ready to handle projected user traffic -Improve automation and fault tolerance of the deployment process -Drive long-term improvement in CoE and agency DevOps system availability by removing single points of failure

Key objective #3: Practice an exceptional level of customer service with all partners, providing a unique, tailored experience.

-Explain product or services to people who have varying levels of technical knowledge — always meet the agency partner where they’re at -Empathetically guide our agency partners through the bureaucracy of the sometimes long and arduous compliance and security processes -Skillfully map specific inquiries to product capabilities, identifying the product that best meets the agency partner’s needs -Serve as a liaison between the stakeholders and the project teams, delivering feedback to the team, enabling them to make necessary changes to product performance or presentation -Support a safe, inclusive workplace and a positive team culture where all team members value diversity and individual differences

Basic Information

Location: Washington, DC

Salary Range: Base salary GS-15 - $142,701 to $170,800

If you are a new federal employee, your starting salary will likely be set at the Step 1 of the grade for which you are selected. Total compensation may include locality pay based on the individual’s duty location. For more salary information including locality pay details, please visit OPM’s Salaries & Wages page.

Who May Apply: All United States citizens and nationals (residents of American Samoa and Swains Islands) and applicants must not be GSA employees or contractors

Job announcement number:

Opening and closing period for this job application: TBD EDT to TBD EDT

Job Title:

Series & Grade:

• 15

Promotion Potential: GS-

Number of vacancies: (Additional vacancies may be filled from this announcement as needed)

Supervisory status:

Travel requirement: Occasional travel may be required up to 10%-20% per year

Security clearance: Public trust. Background investigation required.

Work Schedule: Full time

Appointment Type: Excepted Service: Not to exceed 24 months (2 years); may be extended for an additional 2 years for a maximum of 4 years total.

Job Summary

This is a Schedule A position under 5 CFR 213.3102(r) to hire unique technical skills to develop innovative digital tools and services in the Excepted Services, US Digital Service 18F Fellowship Program. The 18F office is charged with developing innovative digital tools and services and uses lean startup and agile development principles to collaborate with other agencies to fix technical problems, build products, and improve how government serves the public through technology.

As an Innovation Specialist, the team member serves the government and makes an impact on a massive scale. The position requires that fellows perform work of an exceptional degree of difficulty across a wide range of topics at the convergence of technology, policy, and delivery. The incumbent leverages their experience deploying high quality, user centric platforms and services to lead major initiatives, consult on systems and policy proposal, and provide technical, policy, and programmatic guidance to government.

This position is located within the General Services Administration (GSA), Federal Acquisition Service (FAS), Technology Transformation Service (TTS), Centers of Excellence.

GSA has been repeatedly named as one of the ‘Best Places to Work’ in the federal government. You will have access to many benefits including:

• Health insurance (choose from a wide range of plans)
• Life insurance coverage with several options
• Sick leave and vacation time, including 10 paid holidays per year
• Thrift Savings Plan (similar to a 401(k) plan)
• Flexible work schedules and telework
• Transit and child care subsidies
• Training and development
• Flexible spending accounts
• Long-term care insurance
• Training and development

Key Requirements

1. You must be a U.S. Citizen or National (residents of American Samoa and Swains Islands)
2. Suitable for federal employment, determined by a background investigation
3. You may be required to serve a trial period
4. Direct Deposit of salary check to financial organization required
5. Register with Selective Service, if you are required by https://www.sss.gov/Registration-Info/Who-Registration

Employment Requirements

• Serve a one year trial period, if required
• Undergo and pass a background investigation. You must be granted this clearance before you can start the job
• Have your identity and work status eligibility verified if you are not a GSA employee. We will use the Department of Homeland Security’s e-Verify system for this
• Any discrepancies must be resolved as a condition of continued employment
• Complete a financial disclosure report to verify that no conflict, or an appearance of conflict, exists between your financial interest and this position

Duties

Typical duties for the fellow include but are not limited to: Conceiving/recommending projects/studies to advance the state of the art in the specialty area; applying forward­ thinking design and development principles to product or services development, delivery and program management, such as lean startup, user­centered design, and agile development; Analyzing and scoping the technical and policy requirements needed to implement complex digital solutions; Assessing the state of digital services provided by the Federal Government, and working to align strategies and practice; conferring with key government/private officials and top experts in the field, representing the agency at technical symposia and/or conferences; Developing authoritative papers/reports; developing and leading adoption of government­wide standards for digital services, leading to their adoption across citizen and business­facing government services; Demonstrating thought leadership and contributing best practices in a variety of technologies and principles; Contributing to a talent strategy that includes recruiting innovators and entrepreneurs to participate in solving complex and esoteric challenges.

Evaluation

We will use a method called Category Rating to assess your application.

Here’s how it will work:

You will be scored based on a review of your application materials, measuring your possession of each of the following competencies

• Maintainable Software Development: Knowledge and ability to develop software, with emphasis on reliability, automation, testing, measuring, and scaling infrastructure
• Modern Infrastructure Practices and Architecture: Ability to operate complex software at scale in a cloud environment using principles of Site Reliability Engineering and DevOps
• Production Operations: Ability to operate production systems at scale with high availability
• Communication: Ability to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and stakeholders to establish a shared vision and understanding of a project’s technical implementation, objectives, and goals
• TTS Core Values Alignment: Working with integrity, transparency and resiliency in civic minded or high impact environment

If found to be eligible and at least minimally qualified for the position, your score will be used to place you in a category (Best Qualified, Well Qualified, or Qualified).

If your resume does not support your possession of the competencies listed above, we may lower your score, which could place you in a lower category.

Within each category, veterans will receive selection priority over non-veterans if supported by appropriate documentation.

Qualifications

All applications will be reviewed by a panel of subject matter experts against a scoring rubric created for this role. In order to properly be able to evaluate your previous experience, we recommend being as detailed as possible in your resume and following our general guidance on creating federal style resume.

To qualify for this role, you must have one year of specialized experience equivalent to the GS-14 in the Federal service. Specialized experience is:

1. Experience being a part of a team to deliver digital products or services. This experience must include ALL of the following: -Providing technical support or product development for clients -Delivering tools or products with high uptime or availability requirements (i.e. SLAs of 99.9%+) -Experience using Site Reliability Engineering or DevOps practices in a production environment

2. Experience providing technical expertise on projects or initiatives to deliver digital products or services. This experience must include ONE of the following: -Conducting technology evaluations -Making architectural decisions -Developing new software features by writing code -Reducing technical debt -Leading incident response

3. Experience deploying, operating, maintaining, or running a cloud infrastructure or platform. This experience must include TWO of the following: -Using a cloud computing platform -Using cloud computing infrastructure -Using continuous integration or continuous deployment tools -Using infrastructure automation tooling -Using infrastructure monitoring tooling

Qualification determinations cannot be made when resumes do not include the required information, so failure to provide this information may result in disqualification.

For each job on your resume, provide:

• the exact dates you held each job (from month/year to month/year or “present”)
• number of hours per week you worked (if part time)