Clarification from the agency

This position is open to the public. This position allows for situational, and recurring telework, but does not qualify for full-time or remote telework.

The Cloud Architect is embedded within the CMM Product Architecture and Experience (PAX) pod to design and govern cloud architecture that enables secure, scalable delivery of CMM capabilities. This role defines standardized cloud architecture patterns and non-functional benchmarks, ensuring solution designs are platform-ready, scalable, and aligned with program governance and release timelines.

1. Defining target cloud architecture for PAX pod solutions including network, computer, storage, and runtime patterns.
2. Establishing nonfunctional requirements and architecture runway to de-risk delivery across sprints and releases.
3. Collaborating with DevSecOps engineers and Security pods to ensure cloud designs satisfying secure-by-design expectations and delivering evidence needs.
4. Providing architecture guidance on environment strategy, tooling dependencies, and promoting pathways to support release cadence.
5. Reviewing solution designs for operational readiness including observability, reliability, and support handoffs.
6. Collaborating with security and data architects to ensure cloud patterns enable API, data, and cross-service interoperability.
7. Defining cloud cost-management and capacity-planning strategies, including usage patterns, guardrails, and optimization recommendations.
8. Owning connectivity architecture decisions, including on-prem to cloud (e.g., VPN, Direct Connect), network segmentation, and traffic routing patterns required for secure and reliable integration with external systems.
9. Defining resilience and failure-mode expectations, including multi-region strategies, backup/recovery patterns, and degradation behaviors aligned to service criticality.
10. Publishing and maintaining reusable cloud architecture patterns and standards for adoption across PAX pods.
11. Participating in solution architecture reviews to align cloud decisions to program-wide guardrails and cross-pod dependencies.

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 designing and governing cloud architecture for large-scale enterprise platforms.

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.