Clarification from the agency

This vacancy announcement is open to the public. This is a temporary position Not-to-Exceed (NTE) 4 years. This position allows for recurring and situational telework but does not qualify for full-time or remote telework. The duty station is in the Thurgood Marshal Federal Judiciary Building at One Columbus Circle NE in Washington, DC, across the street from Union Station with easy access to Metro (red line), VRE, MARC, and Amtrak.

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, Office of the Deputy Director, Case Management Modernization Program Office (CMM) is seeking an experienced Supervisory Information Technology Specialist (Quality Lead) to join its team. This position reports to the CMM Chief Product Manager.

The Supervisory Information Technology Specialist (Quality Lead) is in the build workstream solution layer and defines and enforces the program's test strategy, quality gates, and readiness evidence so delivery pods can ship usable, supportable increments with predictable quality. The incumbent standardizes cross-pod quality practices, validates that acceptance criteria are testable and met, and drives release readiness across environments and integrated capabilities.

The incumbent must be familiar with performance, security, and contract testing patterns for enterprise APIs and distributed services; and possess proven stakeholder management skills across product, engineering, architecture, security, data, and operations to resolve quality risks quickly.

The duties of the position include, but are not limited to:

1. Driving the strategic product vision, roadmap, and prioritization to deliver business outcomes in alignment with program release plans.
2. Designing and executing the end-to-end test strategy across units, including integration, regression, and user acceptance testing aligned to the build delivery cadence and release trains.
3. Establishing and running quality gates and readiness evidence requirements for sprint and program increment completion, including defect thresholds and sign-off criteria.
4. Partnering with product owners and delivery leads to ensure requirements are traceable end-to-end from requirement to epic to story to test coverage and completion evidence prior to acceptance.
5. Driving integrated testing across pods by coordinating test planning, test data needs, environment readiness, and cross-pod dependency validation.
6. Driving defect management standards and triage rhythms and ensuring issues are prioritized, routed, and resolved with clear accountability and cross-pod visibility.
7. Leading release readiness validation, including performance, security, and contract/API testing expectations in coordination with PAX, security, and data counterparts.
8. Providing quality risk reporting and escalation inputs into program governance and ensuring leaders have actionable quality signals and mitigation plans.
9. Driving requirements-to-test traceability across pods, including coverage reporting and evidence linking for sprint, program increment, and release readiness.
10. Driving the program test tooling strategy and administration, including test management, automated testing frameworks, reporting dashboards, and CI/CD quality gate integration.
11. Running the quality chapter cadence (standards, templates, playbooks, and peer reviews), including test tooling workflows, quality gate configurations, and requirements-to-test traceability conventions and reporting.
12. Deploying and enabling designated quality representatives across pods, coaching teams on test tooling adoption and automation practices, and verifying traceability evidence and adherence to agreed guardrails and gates.

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 must demonstrate experience in ALL areas defined below:

• Leading quality engineering or test strategy in a scaled, multi-team agile environment with program increment and sprint-based delivery.
• Experience in automated testing approaches, CI/CD quality integration, and test environment management.
• Driving cross-team quality governance, readiness gates, and release criteria in complex platforms and integration landscapes.
• Implementing test management and traceability practices in agile delivery using common application lifestyle management test tooling and producing coverage and readiness reporting.

• Familiarity with performance, security, and contract testing patterns for enterprise APIs and distributed services.
• Proven stakeholder management skills across product, engineering, architecture, security, data, and operations to resolve quality risks quickly.
• 3+ years experience leading technical teams.

• Certified Quality Engineer (ASQ CQE)
• Foundation and Advanced Test Manager
• Test Automation Engineer

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.