Clarification from the agency

This position is opened to the current employees of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts (AO) only.

The Platform Engineering Division (PED) is seeking an Information Technology Specialist (InfoSec) to join its Identity and Access Branch (IAB).

The Information Technology Specialist (InfoSec) serves as a technical authority for the engineering, implementation, and tier 3 support of the organization's identity, credential, and access management (ICAM) ecosystem and zero trust architecture (ZTA). The Information Technology Specialist (InfoSec) manages digital identities, single sign-on (SSO), and multi-factor authentication (MFA) and plays a key role in the organization's transition to a zero trust model by developing dynamic access control policies that continuously verify identity and device health across hybrid on-premises and cloud environments.

Duties include, but are not limited to:

1. Engineering and maintaining enterprise directory services in accordance with NIST SP 800-63 standards to ensure secure ICAM operations.
2. Governing the identity lifecycle through automated onboarding and offboarding workflows and enforcing least privilege principles.
3. Designing and deploying SSO and MFA solutions aligned with authenticator assurance levels to reduce unauthorized access.
4. Integrating federal and commercial applications using SAML 2.0, OIDC, and OAuth 2.0 to ensure secure federation and token exchange.
5. Leading Zero Trust policy engineering by managing policy decision points and policy enforcement points in a "never trust, always verify" framework.
6. Configuring conditional access policies to evaluate real-time signals, including device posture, user risk, and geolocation.
7. Managing public key infrastructure, including certificate issuance and revocation, to maintain enterprise trust.
8. Implementing hardware-based authenticators to meet federal phishing-resistant authentication requirements.
9. Performing Tier 3 troubleshooting for directory replication, hybrid synchronization, and federation metadata issues.
10. Assessing identity and access risks and developing contingency plans for outages or credential compromise.
11. Mentoring technical staff on federal ICAM mandates and developing job aids to enhance service delivery and security posture.

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.

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:

• Administering enterprise-level identity providers.
• Configuring and troubleshooting federated protocols (SAML, OIDC, OAuth) for single sign-on across diverse environments.
• Designing zero trust frameworks and implementing conditional access policies based on device health and user behavior.
• Managing enterprise directory services (Active Directory/LDAP), including lifecycle management of digital identities and privileged groups

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.