Patent and Trademark Office
Patent Examiner (Computer Science) Direct-Hire Authority (DHA)
Patent and Trademark Office · Department of Commerce · Alexandria, Virginia
- Pay
- $68,539 – $121,919 per year
- Grade
- GS 7–11
- Schedule
- Full-time
- Appointment
- Permanent
- Series
- 1224 Patent Examining
- Posted
- 5 Oct 2026
- Closes
- closes in 17 days25 October 2026, end of the day Eastern
Who may apply Career transition (CTAP, ICTAP, RPL) The public
Also Telework eligible Clearance: Other
Summary
The USPTO drives U.S innovation for the benefit of all Americans and providing intellectual property protection for innovators and entrepreneurs worldwide. We are looking for talented individuals to examine ideas that benefit society and bring innovation to market. You'll shape the future of patent examination, advance key processes, and support innovation in cutting-edge ways.
From the announcement on USAJOBS, the agency’s own words.
Applications are made on USAJOBS. This page is a listing, not an application form, and the announcement is authoritative wherever the two differ.
Method
Where every figure comes from.
The source
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management’s USAJOBS register, read through its Search API on 7 October 2026 at 9:06 a.m. Eastern: 11,696 open announcements held, 464 overseas ones left out. Titles, pay, grades, closing dates and places are as OPM publishes them; where a page here and the announcement differ, the announcement is right. USAJOBS data are a work of the U.S. government, not subject to copyright (17 U.S.C. §105), read under the terms of use the API publishes at developer.usajobs.gov.
The two rules
A job expires: every announcement leaves every page here at the end of its closing day, Eastern time, whenever the register was last read. Two figures, never one: an announcement naming more than 15 towns is a nationwide notice, counted apart and filed under none of them.
Applying
Applications are made on USAJOBS and nowhere else. This desk is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, OPM or any federal agency, collects nothing from you and has no part in any hiring decision.
What you type
A search travels only as the address of the next page on labs.llc (?query=). The server keeps the day’s answer to each search under a hash of its words, never who asked, and discards it at midnight Eastern; the site’s analytics records page views, and that address is part of the view it records.
The full method · the four axes of the harvest, the 10,000 cap, the nationwide cutoff and where it came from, closing dates, and what is not here.