Clarification from the agency

The selectee of this position may be assigned to an official duty station within or outside the Washington, DC commuting area. Accordingly, pay will be set based on the locality area/official duty station assigned.

The incumbent of this position will perform various duties under the direction and guidance of the Security Automation Branch Chief. The incumbent serves as a Security Automation Architect and is responsible for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the judiciary's cybersecurity program by leveraging automation and orchestration. The candidate should have a strong background in security use cases, software development, data integration and must have the capability to problem solve while developing new automated processes.

Duties may include, but are not limited to, the following:

1. Supporting development of REACT dashboards within the Splunk framework to automate security processes.
2. Integrating new datasets to improve the analytic capability for hard-to-detect cyber security threats across the enterprise.
3. Improving Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) tools integration, operations, and full automation of end-to-end testing through a Development Security Operations (DEVSECOPS) delivery model.
4. Developing new capabilities and APIs in response to customer requirements for improved data exchanges and analytic workflows.
5. Developing security orchestration and automation workflows to simplify threat detection and improve analytic capabilities.
6. Visualizing data in the most effective way possible for a given project or question.
7. Creating Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and other metrics to improve the effectiveness of the cybersecurity program.
8. Designing custom data models to support data science efforts.
9. Overseeing SOAR and SIEM version maintenance.
10. Monitoring SOAR and SIEM quality assurance dashboards for issue mitigation and improvement.
11. Working both individually and in a collaborative manner with a team.

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.

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 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 must demonstrate ALL areas defined below:

• Working in a cybersecurity environment supporting SIEM and SOAR operations;
• Querying and working with large datasets;
• Developing and leveraging APIs for security orchestration. This includes a detailed understanding of using JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) for data exchanges between different systems;
• Developing and leveraging APIs for security orchestration. This includes a detailed understanding of using JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) for data exchanges between different systems;
• Software architecture and design. This includes experience independently designing code to customer specifications;
• Experience with industry tools and frameworks used to build automated testing environments such as Docker or Kubernetes.
• Experience in Agile development/security/operations (DevSecOps) and CI/CD repository and pipeline tools. This includes experience developing unit tests to automatically validate code.

• Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP)
• Certified Secure Software Lifecycle Professional (CSSLP)
• GIAC Python Coder

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.