Information Technology Specialist

**Duties**:
This position is located in the Mainframe Systems Support Section of the Assistant Director’s Office in the Information, Policy and Public Affairs (IPPA) Division, Bureau of Prisons (BOP).

The mission of this section is to provide Bureau-wide Information Technology (IT) support for IBM-compatible z/OS mainframe computers and systems software; and technical support and assistance for computer operations, System Development programming staff, Office of Research, Institution staff, and other government agencies accessing the BOP mainframe computer.

The section provides technical support for the SENTRY database management system (IBM DB2), telecommunications software (IBM CICS-TS), Applications Servers (IBM WebSphere), fault analysis software (IBM Fault Analyzer, Debug Tool), Auditing and Compliance Software (Bottomline Intellinx/zWatch) and all other z/OS mainframe software utilized by the BOP.

Responsible for assisting in the section’s duties including all aspects of the BOP’s IBM mainframe data processing requirements.

**Requirements**:
**Conditions of Employment**:

- U.S. Citizenship is Required.
- See Special Conditions of Employment Section.

**Qualifications**:
To be considered for the position, you must meet the following qualification requirements.

**Basic Requirements**:
**Education**:
There is no substitution of education for specialized experience at this grade level.

**OR**

**Experience**:
You 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.

**AND**

**Specialized Experience**

You must have one year of specialized experience at the next lower GS-grade (or equivalent). 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.

Some examples of this qualifying experience are:

- Experience with installing, configuring and monitoring performance of Application Servers on a distributed or mainframe environment.
- Experience with DB2 in an operational 24x7 environment performing DBA functions to include object maintenance, backup, recovery, monitoring and performance tuning on a mainframe environment.

**AND**

**Selective Placement Factor**:

- Applicant must have a minimum of 5 years’ experience involving work performing DB2 Z/OS database administration to include disaster recovery, database design, performance tuning, installation, updating, maintenance, monitoring, and experience using IBM DB2 Administration tool or BMC main view AND a minimum of 3 years’ experience supporting/involving work using Job Control Language (JCL)/Common Business Oriented Language (COBOL)/Customer Information Control System (CICS)/Restructured Extended Executor (REXX) languages and knowledge of full life cycle of software development.

**NOTE**: Applicants must clearly address this experience in their resume to be found qualified.

If applicable, credit will be given for paid and unpaid experience. To receive proper credit, you must show the actual time (such as the number of hours worked per week) spent in activities.

**Education**:
See Qualifications Section for education requirements, **if applicable**.
- Foreign Education:_ For information regarding foreign education requirements, please see Foreign Diploma and Credit Recognition at the U.S. Department of Education website: Recognition of Foreign Qualifications.

If you are selected for this position and qualified based on education (i.e. basic education requirement and/or substitution of education), you will be required to provide an OFFICIAL transcript prior to you