Looking for a new job is traditionally on the top 10 list of New Year’s resolutions. And more people today than ever before are leaving their jobs and looking for new ones. If this is the year you’re going to change jobs, you might want to look at government software engineer jobs.
There’s several reasons why the government is a good place to look for computer science jobs right now. First, with funding efforts such as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, many federal, state, and local government agencies have more money to create jobs and hire people. Second, with the so-called “Great Resignation,” more people are changing jobs and it’s harder for everyone, including governments, to hire people. Finally, governments have been hit with the “Silver Tsunami” of people retiring – particularly people who held off on retiring during the recession.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Government Computer Science Jobs
As with everything, there are both advantages and disadvantages to getting a computer science job with the government. In particular, salaries may be lower than in the private sector, and raises harder to come by. For example, according to Glassdoor, the typical United States Federal Government Software Engineer salary is $98,953 per year and can range from $71,853 – $173,727 per year. Sites such as ZipRecruiter let you search for comparative salaries among states and cities.
It is also possible – though not definite — that the technology and development techniques in governments aren’t cutting-edge. The hiring process – as with the procurement process – can also be slower.
On the other hand, the benefits are generally thought of as good, and government jobs are typically thought of as having more security than jobs in the private sector.
And you’d certainly have lots of company. According to the Partnership for Public Service, more than 80,000 people work in information technology and computer science in the federal government alone.
Reclassification
In an attempt to improve the federal government hiring process, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is working on reclassifying some jobs in the computer science field, known as an occupational series. Such reclassifications make it easier for departments to request, and for people to apply with, specialized computer science skills.
Just last month, the OPM released a new occupational series for the position of “data scientist,” a project that’s been underway for more than two years.
And data science was a field with a lot of pent-up demand, both from departments and from employees. When the OPM asked people to apply for data science jobs a year ago, it received applications from more than 500 people in less than 48 hours.
OPM is also expected to “establish or update one or more occupational series” covering federal jobs in data science and data management, as well as software development and software engineering jobs, according to the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act.
Remote Jobs
These days, federal, state, and local governments are also more inclined to support remote work, such as telework. Under President Barack Obama, the federal government had already been more
open to remote working, which helped the government save money by reducing the amount of office space that government workers require.
This fits in with current IT trends in general. Even before COVID-19, a 2019 study of 4,500 respondents found that 86% of IT developers worked remotely, with almost one-third working from home full time. Moreover, 43% said that the ability to work remotely was “a must-have” when considering a job offer and that a flexible work schedule was “very important” to many of the respondents (44%).
Certainly, the pandemic has accelerated such developments, and many government computer science job listings note that a position can be performed at least sometimes from home or another remote location.
Remote work also gives governments more flexibility by giving them the ability to hire workers in a broader geographic area. For example, a computer science worker in the federal government doesn’t necessarily have to live in the Washington, D.C. area, and a computer science worker for the state of California can live in San Francisco or Los Angeles rather than having to work in Sacramento. Many government jobs do require that workers live in the United States, however.
Finding Government Computer Science Jobs
For computer science jobs in the federal government, the place to start is https://www.usajobs.gov/, the federal government job portal. There, you can search for the jobs based on factors such as title, location, agency, whether jobs are open to the public, and so on.
For computer science jobs in state and local government, you could start with https://www.governmentjobs.com/, which lets state and local governments post jobs and provides a standard way to apply to them. There, you can search for the jobs based on factors such as title, location, how recently they’ve been posted, and estimated salaries. The site also has a Twitter feed.
In addition, you can go to websites for specific state and local governments, and general job websites. But while you can look for jobs in the federal government in specific agency websites and in general job websites, they’re likely to send you to the usajobs.gov website to apply.
If you’re looking for the next phase of your career, computer science jobs in government are certainly something to consider.
