Really cool to see the US Government posting roles here. Kudos.

This job posting is part of a pilot that the US Digital Service is running, and we read Hacker News. :)

I am excited to hear USDS is piloting a project with DOI! I hope it's a success and fellow agencies see the benefits of changing the current hiring system. USAJOBS/the federal hiring system is so broken!

How much more red tape if any do you have to cut through to infuse new tech in a government setting over say a similarly sized private company (measuring size by headcount)?

This is a great question. Some laws make it harder to share data between parts of the federal government, for example. That might make spotting fraud, spam, or improper payments harder. At the same time, many folks might not want the government combining data across silos without a strong vetting process.

Or to take another example, there's a misconception that the Paperwork Reduction Act makes it illegal to talk to users: https://medium.com/@ErieMeyer/user-research-is-not-illegal-u... . In that case, the law might be reasonable, but you might have to tackle misconceptions or lore to make forward progress. A favorite hack to make forward progress is to ask "Show me where exactly in the law (or regulation or policy) it says that we can't do this?"

Going back to your question, the U.S. government is one of the largest organizations on the planet: millions of people. Veterans Affairs has about 380,000 employees alone. Meanwhile, Google just passed 100,000 employees.

Is it harder to infuse tech in government compared to a private company? Absolutely. But you also have to grade on the curve that the government is really big. And the flip side of that is that if you make a change in government, the scale means that you can affect millions or tens of millions of people with your change.

I don't think the problem in the government is ever the need for "New Tech", its normally just better application of really well understood tech, that being said for a company of similar headcount ( of which there are few to none ) the amount of tape is similar, but its different in that the government has a few specific rules like Trusted Internet Connections, and Paperwork Reduction mandates that private companies don't deal with. Also the other big difference is everything is done via a contract which brings in a few more stakeholders and often adds in a few restrictions to what can be done ( i.e. sometimes contracts say a specific technology must be used ).

If you have ever worked on a contract with a Fortune-100 company its about the same level of tape

Aren't you the head of USDS?

Yes, yes he is.

Does the USDS hire 100% remote?

Sadly for USDS we need people to come to DC for the work we do.

wait a minute ... Are you in Guam right now?

When you say remote and onsite, do you mean there is the option to do either, or that the job entails both? Because if you're offering fully remote positions for that pay with federal benefits/pension... damn

We (the USDS) are posting on behalf of the NPS as part of a new hiring pilot. We clarified with the team there -- unfortunately fully remote positions are not currently available. You would need to be in one of those three cities, but telework is often supported by supervisors.

Might I ask that you edit the original post to remove 'remote' as I think that might mislead under the common definition in this thread.

The editing window had closed by the time we got clarification, so wasn't able to make the adjustment. Apologies for the confusion.

The apply button is now active -- sorry for the delay!

Wow, my dad worked for DOI for 30 years as a research scientist and topped-out at a GS-13. And you're starting sysads there?

This is a problem I have seen trying to staff up technical projects on NIH grants -- even barely-competitive compensation for entry-level developers exceeds that of the senior staff evaluating the grants. Makes everyone feel weird.

Do you think your dad's sysadmin had access to (relatively) more damaging stuff than this person will?

There are lower and higher grade levels for Sys Admins. This particular role is for a GS-13, which should be reflected by the required experienced.

Sorry if I was misunderstood. glup's reply to my comment nailed it.

He started in DOI as a seasonal post-doc for USFW at a GS-5. My point is merely that the work he was doing then, much less at the end of his career, was both much more specialized and much more intrinsically valuable than a sysad working on this project. And I say that as a recovering sysadmin who's overqualified for this role.

As glup pointed out, y'all have to be competitive though, so this was much more of a comment about the priorities of labor markets than this particular posting.

Regardless, appreciate y'all posting roles like this here.