Join 18F

Help transform how the federal government does technology.

We’re looking for candidates passionate about our mission, with top-notch software development, design, content, and operations skills to match.

We’re a remote-first team with offices in DC, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, and we have teammates working all over the country. Read more about how we make our distributed model work.

If you have any questions, please contact our Talent Team at join18f@gsa.gov.

Open positions

Office of Acquisition Design Lead

Most of our roles use the “Innovation Specialist” position description, regardless of what team we're hiring for. See the performance profile link above for more detail about specific skills, responsibilities, and expectations.

How to apply

When you apply for a role at 18F, you’ll need to submit a government-style resume, which includes much more detail than a private-sector resume.

Eligibility

All United States citizens and nationals (residents of American Samoa and Swains Islands) are eligible to apply. For most of our roles, you can live anywhere in the United States.

Most 18F positions are “not to exceed” (NTE) positions, which means they are two-year terms and can be renewed once, for a total of four years.

18F is an equal opportunity employer

We’re building a team that reflects the United States. We don’t discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex, gender identity or expression, national origin, political affiliation, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, genetic information, age, membership in an employee organization, retaliation, parental status, military service, or other non-merit factors. If you have the skills we need, that’s all that matters.

How we collect and review applications

We collect applications during the period specified in the job posting (usually five business days). We consider all applications collected within a given period a cohort and evaluate them against each other.

Once the application collection period ends, you can’t add to or modify your application.

A panel of subject matter experts will review each application using a qualification process called Category Rating. Once we’ve evaluated all applications within the cohort, we send all the applications and evaluation scores to General Services Administration (GSA) Human Resources, our partner in the hiring process, to apply Veterans’ Preference for candidates who claim it. The top qualified candidates will be contacted to continue on to the interview process.

The interview process

The interview process usually begins with a 30-minute preliminary screening by phone or video call. Plan to talk about your skills and experience and what you’re passionate about. We’ll also share more about our teams and the work we do here.

If we’d like to chat with you more, we’ll invite you to a series of video chats with 18F team members for a couple of longer conversations.

If you’re interviewing to join our Engineering team, you can read more details about the interviews we conduct for prospective engineers.

If 18F identifies you as a strong match after interviews, your 18F recruiter will reach out to you with next steps.

After your interviews

The hiring process continues in partnership with GSA HR, our parent federal agency’s human resources office. They’re responsible for extending tentative and official final offers. Here’s how that works:

  1. A GSA HR specialist calls you with a tentative offer, including salary. “Tentative” means the offer is contingent on security clearance.
  2. If you accept the tentative offer, then we move to the next step.
  3. You receive a USAccess email to schedule a time to have your fingerprints taken at one of these locations.
  4. You schedule and complete your fingerprint scans.
  5. You fill out the e-QIP questionnaire, which covers seven years’ worth of employment and location history, among other things.
  6. Once your e-QIP is processed, you receive an interim security clearance.
  7. A GSA HR specialist calls you with a final offer.
  8. We work with you to set a start date. Candidates start on the first day of a GSA pay period (every other Monday).

Security clearance documents

All government positions require some kind of background check. Most roles at 18F require a public trust position clearance, which is more thorough than most private-sector background checks but not as intensive as a higher government security clearance. The clearance process adds some time and forms to the hiring process, but the GSA Human Resources team will guide you through it.

It can be helpful to start pulling some documents together in advance. The forms you can expect to complete include:

Government pay grades

18F team members are hired for specific position descriptions at a specific grade level from the federal general schedule (GS). The GS system is a pay system for civilian employees in the federal government; evaluation and compensation varies by grade level. The qualification requirements for each position at a specific GS level are based on education, background, accomplishments, and experience. The specific requirements will always be listed in the job posting. Salaries of federal employees are public information, and your salary may become publicly available on sites like FederalPay.org.

Understanding grade levels

Federal employees on the general schedule range from GS-1 to GS-15. Find out more about the GS system from the Office of Personnel Management.

GS grade levels specify a fixed compensation range for a particular position, in particular geographic localities, within the federal government. Understanding the relationship between GS grade level, location, and compensation is important to understanding how pay works at 18F.

Each GS grade level contains a series of 10 steps, and new GS employees are usually hired at step 1 of a GS grade. However, in special circumstances, agencies may authorize a higher step rate for a newly-appointed federal employee based on a special need of the agency or superior qualifications of the prospective employee.

The annual salary cap for all GS employees is $161,900 per year. You cannot be offered more than this under any circumstance.

The GS salary calculator shows how level, step, and locality affect compensation.

Raises and bonuses

Step increases are the most common kind of raise for GS employees, and the waiting period depends on the step. Steps two, three, and four have a one-year period for step increases. Steps five, six, and seven are two years. Steps eight, nine, and ten are three years. So if you come in at step one, the following year you will be a step two. If you come in at a step six, it will take two years to be a step seven.

Bonuses generally come after the year-end review process in late September, and are awarded based on the results of that review. You must be an 18F employee for at least three months to get a performance review. Bonuses are either a small percentage of your annual salary or additional paid time off.

Benefits and leave

The benefits package for federal employees includes medical, vision, and dental insurance, life insurance, paid leave, and the Thrift Savings Plan (the government version of a 401K) with up to five percent matching. Our telework policy affords increased flexibility, and employees who use public transit to commute may claim commuter benefits.

18F also supports employees’ ongoing professional development by providing training opportunities and encouraging employees to participate in conferences, consortia, and other industry events.

The 18F Handbook has more information about working at 18F, including:

Government-style resumes

Unlike private-sector resumes, government-style resumes are often several pages long and include detailed information about every job you’ve held, your responsibilities, and what you accomplished.

There are many guides to building a government-style resume. Here are several resources from other organizations:

This guide shows how to format a government-style resume and what information to include:

Name
City and state of current residence
Email address
Phone number

TECHNICAL SKILLS & TOOLS

8+ years of experience:

  • List skills and tools for which you have more than 8 years of experience.

4-7 years of experience:

  • List skills and tools for which you have 4-7 years of experience.

1-3 years of experience:

  • List skills and tools for which you have 1-3 years of experience.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Start with your current employment or your most recent role and list all your professional experiences in reverse-chronological order. Include a full chronology — that is, account for all of your time.

See below for employment history formatting.

Role/title, Company name
City, State (if within the U.S.) or City, Country
Duration of employment (MM/YYYY - MM/YYYY or Present)
“Full-time” or “Part-time,” Number of hours per week: __

For each listing, include a one-sentence description of the company, including the mission. This will help us understand the scope of your work, the context of your contributions, the scale of the company, and your role.

For your most relevant, recent, or longest held position, list 8-10 bullet points about your responsibilities and accomplishments. For each prior position, you can list fewer points, but be as detailed as possible. For jobs held many years ago or unrelated to your current role, list 1-2 bullet points each. If these jobs included transferrable skills (management, communication, and problem solving), mention them.

Here are a few pointers:

  • Though we always enjoy learning more about your team, please focus on what you — not your team — accomplished.
  • Don’t be concise! Yes, this flies in the face of what you learned in your English classes, but government resumes must include extreme detail.
  • Use non-technical terminology. If you must use technical terms, include definitions, where applicable.
  • Quantify as much as you can: number of projects you worked on, number of people you managed, number of dollars you saved the company, and so on.

If you were unemployed at any point, please indicate this. Unemployment is completely acceptable and understood — we just need a full timeline with no gaps. For instance:

Unemployed
Start MM/YYYY - End MM/YYYY

Brief explanation (Took time to travel, to be with my family, and so on) to the extent you’re comfortable sharing. It’s also OK not to include a description.

EDUCATION

Name of college/university/institution, City, State
Type of degree, major and minor, MM/YYYY degree received
Graduation honors, if applicable

Other sections to include, if applicable:

  • Volunteer work (include the organization’s name, your years of participation, and a one-line description of your role)
  • Relevant awards (include awarding organization, title of award, year received, and any relevant details, such as chosen as award winner out of 300 contenders)
  • Relevant public speaking engagements and presentations (include title of presentation, name of conference/event, month and year of presentation, and any other relevant details)
  • Certifications (name of certificate, institution issuing the certificate, year issued)
  • Relevant professional affiliations (organization name, your years of participation)
  • Publications (including personal blog posts) (title of published work, month and year of publication)
  • Training and courses (name of training or course, organization providing the training, MM/YYYY completed)