IT Specialist

To qualify for this position, applicants must meet all requirements by the closing date of this announcement, 05/06/2026. Applicants must meet all requirements when a request is received to fill a vacancy. You may qualify based on your experience as described below: Basic Requirements Experience: Experience must be IT related; the experience may be demonstrated by paid or unpaid experience and/or completion of specific, intensive training (for example, IT certification), as appropriate. For all positions individuals must have IT-related experience demonstrating each of the five competencies listed below. The employing agency is responsible for identifying the specific level of proficiency required for each competency at each grade level based on the requirements of the position being filled. Attention to Detail - Is thorough when performing work and conscientious about attending to detail. 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. Oral Communication - Expresses information (for example, ideas or facts) to individuals or groups effectively, taking into account 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. Problem Solving - Identifies problems; determines accuracy and relevance of information; uses sound judgment to generate and evaluate alternatives, and to make recommendations. AND Specialized Experience: You must have one year of specialized experience equivalent to at least the next lower grade GS-14 in the normal line of progression for the occupation in the organization. Specialized experience is defined as: Applicants must have experience as the lead architect for a cloud data & analytics platform with responsibility to develop, manage and communicate the overall architecture and roadmap for an enterprise class platform that employs a modern data stack, lake-house patterns, while adhering to cybersecurity standards and constraints. The candidate must demonstrate experience in architecting, designing and deploying high velocity/variety data ingestion and integration, experience in developing and designing best-practices to manage data via techniques such as the medallion data architecture pattern. The candidate must demonstrate experience in continuously refactoring a complex platform to deploy the latest analytics tools. High experience in cloud based identity and access management is required in order to plan, map and communicate policies to secure a critical system and plan for change. Knowledge of cloud networking and communication with on-premises and third-party systems is required. The candidate must have deep knowledge of data governance, managing data as a product, and plan the flow and management of metadata to support cataloging. Experience in establishing cloud automation techniques is also required. Additionally, the candidate must demonstrate experience in documenting and communicating architectures at multiple levels of detail, to staff and management. Overall experience must show evidence of leading and managing the architecture of an enterprise class data and analytics platform in Azure and AWS, and designing interoperability with on-premises and third-party systems. AND Selective Placement Factor(s) Selective Placement Factor experience is defined as: In addition to the minimum qualifications described above, you must meet the following requirement(s) to be considered qualified for the position: Applicants must show experience (within the past 5 years) as the lead architect overseeing an enterprise class data and analytics platform in a cloud environment. Experience in requirements elicitation, documentation, and diagramming of a large analytics system in order to communicate architecture, roadmap, best-practices, and guidance, as well as guiding and advising platform teams to arrive at solutions based on current and to-be architectures. Experience with data security using role based access control and attribute based access control tools. Experience in Data Governance to ensure organizational data governance policies are active, and data is managed as a product. Experience refers to paid and unpaid experience, including volunteer work done through National Service programs (e.g., Peace Corps, AmeriCorps) and other organizations (e.g., professional; philanthropic; religious; spiritual; community; student; social). Volunteer work helps build critical competencies, knowledge, and skills and can provide valuable training and experience that translates directly to paid employment. You will receive credit for all qualifying experience, including volunteer experience. For more information on these qualification standards, please visit the United States Office of Personnel Management's website at https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/classification-qualifications/general-schedule-qualification-standards/. Note: A full year of work is considered to be 35-40 hours of work per week. Part-time experience will be credited on the basis of time actually spent in appropriate activities. Applicants wishing to receive credit for such experience must indicate clearly the nature of their duties and responsibilities in each position and the number of hours a week spent in such employment. It is the policy of the VA to not deny employment to those who have faced financial hardships or periods of unemployment.