Centers of Excellence - Site Lead

Centers of Excellence (CoE) is hiring for GS-15 - Site Lead. 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 salary range for this position is: GS-15 Step 1 - $142,701 to GS-15 Step 10 $170,800

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

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

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 Lead - GS-15

The Centers of Excellence (CoE) work directly with customer agencies to identify their needs, recommend a solution, and identify the best contract vehicle to procure, support, and oversee implementation of the solution. The CoEs are established to implement, enhance and expand public access to federal information services. Each CoE is staffed with experts who provide authoritative advice, expert guidance, and IT transformation services purposed to improve service design and customer interactions across major organizational and federal government lines. Each individual CoE has a different mission and objectives, but all are intended to manage centralized, function­-specific talent, and to ensure effective support for solution implementation. These five Centers focus on cloud adoption, IT infrastructure optimization, customer experience, contact centers and data analytics.

As a Site Lead for the CoEs, you’ll lead a cross-functional team of other digital transformation specialists, with expertise in human centered design, data analytics, change management strategy, technical architecture, software engineering, and procurement. In addition, you will join the broader team of the Technology Transformation Service (TTS), which includes more than 300 people. If you believe the government can better serve the public through the user-centered design of digital services, we hope you’ll join us.

Key Objectives

Key objective #1: You will provide strategic and operational leadership to optimize enterprise productivity and the delivery of high-impact work across the enterprise.

• Monitor productivity (revenue and non-revenue work) to ensure CoE teams are hitting their optimization and billing goals
• Assume responsibility for tracking all action items to completion, using existing tools and proposing the implementation of new processes when necessary
• Ensure continued technical and user centered design excellence in each CoE
• Collect feedback to discuss successes and challenges, and share patterns and key feedback with C-Suite executives as appropriate
• Facilitate and support the sharing of knowledge, tools, assets, and code across the CoE’s
• Act as a liaison between CoE teams and executive partner agency staff
• Document best practices and lessons learned
• Work with the talent team to develop recruitment, retention, and engagement strategies
• Collaborate with and serve as a strategic advisor to the CoE Director and CoE Front Office

Key objective #2: Practice an exceptional level of customer service with your agency partner, providing a unique, tailored experience and making sure that all expectations are met.

• Coordinate a strong overall enterprise transformation vision and develop an effective strategy for fulfilling that vision
• Use empathy and communication skills to quickly build trust with partners
• Explain the work to people who have varying levels of technical knowledge — always meet the client where they are
• Express empathy through the long compliance and security processes
• Serve as a liaison between the clients and the team when needed: Provide client feedback to the team, enabling the team to make necessary changes to project performance or presentation
• Help partners and their leadership understand the value of agile-based program, project, and product management, user-centered design, continuous integration, and working in the open
• Support, convince, and sometimes reassure, partners as they tackle challenges and adopt new practices

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: TBD

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

Job Title: Innovation Specialist

Series & Grade: 0301 - 15

Promotion Potential: GS-15

Number of vacancies: 1 (Additional vacancies may be filled from this announcement as needed)

Supervisory status: NO

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), Office of 18F.

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

• Program Management: Ability to develop and execute a program’s strategy and objectives to meet or exceed desired business results.
• Leadership: Ability to effectively inspire and lead cross-functional teams to meet the project vision and shared objectives of agency partner organizations, while simultaneously providing support and guidance to all members of the partner agency.
• Agile Orientation: Ability to apply agile and open source philosophies to deliver work in a frequent and iterative fashion to address user needs.
• Communication: Communicate effectively with a variety of audiences, particularly in consulting scenarios, 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 leading enterprise transformation and modernization projects, including the research, design, development or delivery of digital products or services. This experience must include ALL of the following:
   • Leading and implementing process improvements that result in efficiencies, cost savings, regulatory compliance or improved profitable service levels
   • Creating and managing a program vision Applying multidisciplinary project management practices (e.g. PMI, SAFE, Agile, OCM, BPM)
   • Leading teams through the adoption of new tools, technologies or methodologies
   • Gaining consensus on program and project goals across a diverse set of stakeholders
   • Leading enterprise wide projects or initiatives within large organizations (either public sector institutions, private corporations, or non-profits) or within highly regulated industries
2. Experience leading business decisions throughout all levels of an organization within highly ambiguous or uncertain situations. This experience must include THREE of the following:
   • Leading intrapreneurial efforts with measurable and demonstrated impactful results to the organization
   • Managing program or project resources, budgets, and deliverables
   • Coaching clients or stakeholders through the adoption of agile, lean or other iterative product development approaches (e.g. Kanban, SCRUM, Agile SAFE framework, Lean, Systems thinking)
   • Coaching upper management, clients or stakeholders through change management related to business transformation
   • Explaining products or services to people who have varying levels of technical knowledge

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)