Information Technology Specialist (APPSW)
What you'd do
WHAT IS INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (IT)? A description of the business units can be found at: https://www.jobs.irs.gov/about/who/business-divisions Position(s) are to be filled in the following area(s): IT - Filing Season and Legislative Delivery Consider each location carefully when applying. If you are selected for a location, that location will become your official post of duty. REVIEW THE ADDITIONAL INFORMATION BELOW FOR FURTHER DETAILS
Major duties
The following are the duties of this position at the full working level. If this vacancy includes more than one grade and you are selected at a lower grade level, you will have the opportunity to learn to perform these duties and receive training to help you grow in this position. Design, develop, test, deploy, and maintain secure and scalable applications using modern engineering practices across one or more delivery domains. Analyze and refactor codebases to derive undocumented requirements, modernize architecture, and align systems with current frameworks, accessibility and security standards. Deliver cross-layer functionality, spanning user interfaces, Application Programming Interface (API) services, backend workflows, and cloud-based infrastructure. Implement advanced logging, monitoring, and observability strategies to ensure high availability, traceability, and diagnosability. Conduct performance testing and recommend architectural or infrastructure improvements based on system profiling and metrics. Leverage artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted development tools and prompt-engineering techniques to streamline delivery processes, enhance code quality, and automate documentation and defect detection.
What you need to qualify
Federal experience is not required. Experience may have been gained in the public sector, private sector or through Volunteer Service. One year of experience refers to full-time work; part-timework is considered on a prorated basis. To ensure full credit for your work experience, please indicate dates of employment by month/day/year, and indicate number of hours worked per week, on your resume. MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS FOR GRADE 12 LEVEL UP (GS or Equivalent): You must have Information Technology related experience demonstrating each of the following nine competencies: 1) Attention to Detail, 2) Customer Service, 3) Decision Making, 4) Information Management, 5) Interpersonal Skills, 6) Oral Communication, 7) Problem Solving, 8) Team Work and 9) Technical Competence. GS-14 SPECIALIZED EXPERIENCE: You must have one year of specialized experience at a level of difficulty and responsibility equivalent to the GS-13 grade level in Federal service. Specialized experience for this position includes: Leading or coordinating IT projects, application-related efforts, operational initiatives, or system-related activities that affect multiple users, teams, programs, or business processes. Applying advanced IT principles, concepts, methods, and practices to evaluate requirements; resolve technical issues; guide system, application, or code testing and configuration decisions; and ensure technical documentation and federal cybersecurity, privacy, or regulatory requirements are addressed. Engaging customers, stakeholders, users, product or business owners, and technical teams to define business or technical requirements, communicate technical impacts, and guide delivery of secure, reliable, scalable IT solutions. Evaluating system, service, or application performance, availability, reliability, security controls, usability, and operational effectiveness; identifying risks, issues, defects, or gaps; and leading corrective actions or improvement efforts. Analyzing competing technical approaches and providing authoritative recommendations to management, stakeholders, or IT specialists on the selection, design, configuration, implementation, or improvement of IT solutions with organizational impact. Applying secure software development across full-stack architectures and cloud-native platforms and designing performant, scalable, and observable systems. Applying CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code, automated testing (including performance), and modern deployment pipelines leveraging AI-enhanced tools to improve development velocity, automated documentation, and increase overall engineering productivity. Applying architectural trade-offs and skill to select appropriate patterns aligned to IT strategy. Creating technical documentation such as Computer Operator Handbooks, system flow diagrams and System Design Documents. AND You must also meet the following requirements MINIMUM AGE REQUIREMENT: Minimum age for federal employment is 18 years old, or at least 16 years old and have: Graduated from high school or been awarded a certificate equivalent to graduating from high school; or Completed a formal vocational training program; or Received a statement from school authorities agreeing with your preference for employment rather than continuing your education. For more information on qualifications please refer to OPM's Qualifications Standards.
Before you apply
Federal applications are different: your resume should be 3–5 pages and mirror the language of this announcement. Read our federal resume guide first — it's the #1 reason qualified people get screened out.
Don't miss the next one.
Get an email the moment a similar federal job opens — postings can close in as little as 5 days.