The Air Force today said its managers hiring civilian federal employees for certain cybersecurity openings can use a streamlined method to rapidly fill more than 680 positions.
Known as Schedule A, it lets Department of Defense jobseekers with disabilities to be considered for jobs without using the traditional competitive procedures. The Department of Defense lets agencies the use of Schedule A in specific cases, including when there is a critical hiring need or when there are special jobs that need to be filled.
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In the Air Force's case, cybersecurity positions approved for Schedule A hiring will perform functions such as cyberrisk and strategic analysis; incident handling and malware/vulnerability analysis; cyberincident response; cyberexercise facilitation and management; cybervulnerability detection and assessment; network and systems engineering; enterprise architecture; intelligence analysis; investigation; investigative analysis; and cyberrelated infrastructure interdependency analysis, the Air Force stated.
In this case, the positions are with the US Strategic Command, the Air Force Office of Special Investigations and the 24th Air Force. They may hire under this authority until Dec. 31, 2012, or until the Office of Personnel Management establishes applicable qualification standards, whichever is earlier, the Air Force stated.
Air Force cybersecurity jobs are posted on USAJOBS.gov., and veterans can go to http://www.afpc.randolph.af.mil/favicon.ico.
In related news the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency this week said it was looking for a few good computer science researchers who might be interested in developing systems for the US military. The move is seen, in part anyway, as a way for the agency to win more heart and minds of the advanced science community.
Anyone it picks would join the 2011 Computer Science Study Group (CSSG) which meets at varying times during the year to "rapidly identify ideas in the field of computer science that will provide revolutionary advances, rather than incremental benefit, to the Department of Defense(DoD)." DARPA says up to 12 participants selected for the 2011 CSSG. As of calendar year 2010, 59 professors from 39 universities are either CSSG participants or alumni, DARPA added.
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