IT Specialist

Deliver secure and high availability infrastructure solutions supporting VA's mission. Serve as an operational service provider of foundational compute, storage, physical database, and client management components. Implement and sustain technical, management, and operational security controls and supporting processes to protect mission critical networks, systems, and applications throughout the VA enterprise. Apply today!

To qualify for this position, applicants must meet all requirements by the closing date of this announcement, 11/09/2026. Basic Requirement (IOR): Individuals must have IT-related experience demonstrating each of the four competencies listed below. Attention to Detail - Is thorough when performing work and conscientious about attending to detail. Customer Service - Works with clients and customers (that is, any individuals who use or receive the services or products that your work unit produces, including the general public, individuals who work in the agency, other agencies, or organizations outside the Government) to assess their needs, provide information or assistance, resolve their problems, or satisfy their expectations; knows about available products and services; is committed to providing quality products and services. Oral Communication - Expresses information (for example, ideas or facts) to individuals or groups effectively, taking into account the audience and nature of the information (for example, technical, sensitive, controversial); makes clear and convincing oral presentations; listens to others, attends to nonverbal cues, and responds appropriately. Problem Solving - Identifies problems; determines accuracy and relevance of information; uses sound judgment to generate and evaluate alternatives, and to make recommendations. The basic requirements MUST be substantiated in your resume. Failure to provide the required information will render your application ineligible for consideration. You may qualify for the GS-12 based on your experience as described below: Specialized Experience GS-12: You must have one year of specialized experience equivalent to at least the next lower grade GS-11 in the normal line of progression for the occupation in the organization. Examples of specialized experience would typically include, but are not limited to: administering and supporting enterprise virtualization environments, including hypervisors, virtualization management platforms, virtual machines, compute clusters, virtual networking, and storage infrastructure; installing, configuring, upgrading, patching, and maintaining virtualization systems; monitoring system health, capacity, availability, and performance; troubleshooting and resolving virtualization issues involving compute, storage, networking, and operating systems; provisioning and managing virtual machines, templates, snapshots, resource allocation, and migrations; implementing security configurations and access controls in accordance with organizational requirements; supporting backup, disaster recovery, high availability, and business continuity activities; coordinating infrastructure changes and maintenance activities with other technical teams; assisting with the planning and execution of virtualization upgrades, migrations, consolidation efforts, and technology refresh projects; providing technical guidance to other administrators and coordinating technical assignments; and maintaining system documentation, configuration records, and operational procedures to support the reliability and availability of enterprise virtualization infrastructure. You may qualify for the GS-13 based on your experience as described below: Specialized Experience GS-13: You must have one year of specialized experience equivalent to at least the next lower grade GS-12 in the normal line of progression for the occupation in the organization. Examples of specialized experience would typically include, but are not limited to: administering and supporting enterprise virtualization environments, including hypervisors, virtualization management platforms, virtual machines, compute clusters, virtual networking, and software-defined storage; installing, configuring, upgrading, patching, and maintaining virtualization infrastructure; monitoring system health, capacity, availability, and performance and resolving complex hardware, storage, network, and virtualization issues; managing virtual machine provisioning, migrations, snapshots, templates, resource allocation, and lifecycle activities; configuring role-based access controls and applying security requirements to virtualization platforms; coordinating infrastructure changes with server, storage, network, cybersecurity, application, and data center teams; analyzing system performance and capacity requirements and recommending changes to improve reliability, scalability, and resource utilization; supporting backup, disaster recovery, high availability, and business continuity requirements; leading technical teams, coordinating work assignments, providing technical direction and mentoring to other administrators, and serving as a technical lead for complex infrastructure initiatives; planning, coordinating, and executing special projects involving virtualization modernization, migrations, upgrades, technology refreshes, consolidation efforts, or new platform deployments; managing project priorities, schedules, technical dependencies, risks, and stakeholder coordination; and providing technical expertise for the design, implementation, troubleshooting, modernization, and ongoing operation of large-scale enterprise virtual infrastructure. You may qualify for the GS-12 and GS-13 based on your experience as described below Selective Placement Factor: This position includes a skill, knowledge, ability, or other worker characteristic basic to -and essential for satisfactory performance of the job. Selective Placement Factors are a prerequisite to appointment and represent the minimum requirements for a position. Applicants who do not meet it are ineligible for further consideration. The Selective Placement Factor for this position is: Demonstrated experience administering, engineering, and supporting large-scale enterprise virtualization infrastructure, including hypervisors, virtualization management platforms, virtual machines, compute clusters, virtual networking, software-defined storage, and associated infrastructure services. Evidence of the Selective Placement Factor must be reflected in your resume. For more information on these qualification standards, please visit the United States Office of Personnel Management's website at https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/classification-qualifications/general-schedule-qualification-standards/.