The Smithsonian Institution is the world’s largest museum, education, and research complex, with 21 museums and the National Zoo. This position is located in the Web and IT Department of Smithsonian Libraries and Archives (SLA). The Web and IT Department is responsible for leading digital projects at SLA including the redevelopment of websites, web applications, workflows, intranets and mobile experiences.

The Application Software Specialist is responsible for technical planning, implementation, and maintenance of applications and processes on various software platforms in SLA's digital ecosystem.  They are highly proficient in software engineering, one or more programming languages, and database-driven systems and performs the following duties:

• Develops digital collections management systems (CMS), websites, web applications, intranets, and blogs with interconnections between Smithsonian enterprise systems, linked data, application programming interfaces (APIs), and other shared systems, web services, and data sources.
• Modifies and upgrades existing applications to ensure compliance with industry standards and best practices for security and accessibility. Monitors and makes improvements to SLA’s existing digital services.
• Leads quality assurance and testing to ensure that all systems and applications are compliant with Smithsonian guidelines and standards.
• Researches existing and emerging technologies to determine appropriate technical and organizational methods of content delivery and presentation.
• Plans and implements data management and migrations between modern and legacy library data systems including SLA’s Integrated Library System and Archives’ Collection Management System, website databases, and others.
• Actively participates and represents SLA’s interests in collaborative digital projects. Works closely with colleagues from other libraries, archives, museums, federal agencies, or cultural organizations.

You will be evaluated for this job based on how well you meet the qualifications. Applicants for this position may be evaluated in multiple stages. The first stage is an evaluation of your responses to the online multiple-choice questions that assess your experience, education, and/or training for the job related competencies below:

• Ability to create software tools and applications and integrations between enterprise software systems via APIs, or custom software services.
• Ability to troubleshoot technical problems, and assess and implement improvements to software tools, integrations between software, or custom software services.
• Ability to develop testing plans and methods of analysis that correspond to verifying that applications adhere to Smithsonian and industry standard guidelines.
• Ability to research and learn new technologies and procedures in order to adapt and apply that knowledge to regular duties.
• Ability to use standard web scripting and query languages to transform data and move it between systems.
• Skill in establishing productive and collaborative working relationships with customers and staff.

You may preview questions for this vacancy.

This position is included in the bargaining unit.

This position is a Remote Job.

This position is offered at the Pay Scale & Grade of GS 11 with Promotion Potential to GS 12.

The salary range listed reflects the GS base rate (not including locality). Upon selection, the salary will be adjusted to include locality. You may view the 2023 General Schedule locality pay levels from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM).