It Specialist; Network

Join the Connectivity and Collaboration Service (CCS) under OIT and be part of VA's digital transformation. CCS designs and maintains world-class connectivity, collaboration, and support services with connections across the enterprise.

This position is within the Core Network Services (CNS) team. The incumbent serves as a specialist responsible for a full range of IT duties with Campus Networking and the isolation of special purpose systems through access control lists and firewall policies. To qualify for this position, applicants must meet all requirements by the closing date of this announcement, 09/04/2026.

Applicants who are current Federal employees and have held a GS grade any time in the past 52 weeks must also meet time-in-grade requirements by the closing date of this announcement. For a GS-11 position you must have served 52 weeks at the GS-09 in Federal service. An SF-50 that shows your time-in-grade eligibility must be submitted with your application materials.

If the most recent SF-50 has an effective date within the past year, it may not clearly demonstrate you possess one-year time-in-grade, as required by the announcement. In this instance, you must provide an additional SF-50 that clearly demonstrates one-year time-in-grade.
Note: Time-In-Grade requirements also apply to former Federal employees applying for reinstatement.

This position allows eligibility through meeting either the requirements specified in the section titled Education or the requirements specified in the section titled Experience.

No education substitute.

To qualify for this position, you must have information technology-related experience demonstrating all of the four competencies listed below. Ensure that this experience is clearly described in your resume:

-AND-

You must have one year of specialized experience equivalent to at least the next lower grade in the normal line of progression for the occupation in the organization. Specialized experience is experience that has equipped the applicant with the particular competencies/knowledge, skills, and abilities to successfully perform the duties of the position and is typically in or related to the work of the position to be filled.

Such experience is typically gained in the IT field or through the performance of work where the primary concern is IT.

You must have one year of specialized experience equivalent to at least the GS-9 level. Specialized experience is defined as demonstrates ability to successfully complete network security and isolation project assignments requiring a range of knowledge of network segmentation requirements, access control techniques, and firewall/switching technologies. To be creditable, accomplishments normally would have involved the following, or the equivalent:

• network isolation and access control methodologies, including the design, modification, and implementation of Access Control Lists (ACLs) and firewall rule sets to segment systems from the enterprise network in accordance with security and compliance requirements;
• Planning and coordinating network change requests originating from ticketing systems, where this entailed gathering technical requirements, assessing risk and impact to existing network architecture, coordinating implementation with stakeholders outside the immediate organizational unit, and documenting change controls; and
• Adaptation of standard configuration guidelines and security precedents to specific isolation requirements, including configuring and troubleshooting switches and routers (LAN/WAN) and firewalls, and developing or modifying scripts (e.g., Python) to automate the deployment of configuration changes, policy pushes, or firewall rule updates across managed network devices.

Experience refers to paid and unpaid experience, including…