The IT Specialist (Security) serves as a Malware Analyst within the Security Operations Center (SOC). In this role, the incumbent performs advanced analysis of malicious software to determine functionality, execution behavior, persistence mechanisms, and attacker intent. The incumbent provides authoritative technical assessments that inform incident containment, remediation, and recovery efforts and contributes to high-confidence threat actor attribution by identifying unique tools, techniques, and behavioral patterns.

Key Duties and Responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

• Performing advanced static and dynamic analysis of complex malware, including binaries and scripts, to determine functionality, behavior, and malicious intent.
• Reverse engineering malicious executables, installers, and payloads to identify execution flow, persistence mechanisms, and embedded capabilities.
• Analyzing malware activity within enterprise and proprietary Judiciary systems to assess operational impact and risk.
• Examining command-and-control (C2) communications, including protocols, encryption methods, obfuscation, and evasion techniques.
• Identifying, validating, and documenting indicators of compromise (IOCs) derived from reverse engineering and behavioral analysis.
• Performing sandboxing and instrumented runtime analysis to observe malware execution and system interactions.
• Correlating malware artifacts with endpoint telemetry, network traffic, and log data to determine scope of compromise and attacker activity.
• Supporting forensic examinations of compromised systems to confirm malware presence, persistence, and post-exploitation behavior.
• Providing expert technical guidance to incident responders on attacker capabilities, risks, and recommended containment and mitigation strategies.
• Producing detailed technical reports and concise summaries that translate complex malware findings into actionable intelligence.
• Monitoring and analyzing emerging malware families, tools, and techniques to enhance detection, attribution, and SOC response readiness.

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 must demonstrate ALL areas defined below:

• Conducting advanced static and dynamic malware analysis to identify malicious functionality, persistence mechanisms, execution flow, command-and-control behavior, and attacker tradecraft across enterprise systems.
• Reverse engineering and analyzing malicious code, scripts, memory artifacts, and suspicious binaries to support incident response, forensic investigations, detection development, and threat attribution activities.
• Analyzing structured and unstructured data sources, including logs from enterprise and custom applications, to detect, investigate, and support response to suspicious or malicious activity.

• Offensive Security Exploit Developer (OSED);
• Offensive Security Exploit Expert (OSEE);
• GIAC Reverse Engineering Malware (GREM); and
• GIAC Exploit Researcher and Advanced Penetration Tester (GXPN).

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.