# Senior Executive Service The **Senior Executive Service (SES)** is the corps of senior federal managers between the [[General Schedule]] workforce and presidential appointees, created by the [[Civil Service Reform Act of 1978]]. It had **6,647 members as of April 2026**. These are the people who actually run bureaus, regional offices and major programs, one layer below the political appointees. ## How it is built - **Four appointment types.** *Career* (competitively selected, with qualifications certified by an OPM Qualifications Review Board against five Executive Core Qualifications). *Noncareer* (political, serving at pleasure). *Limited term* and *limited emergency*. By statute noncareer members may be no more than 10% of the SES government-wide and 25% within any one agency. - **Rank in the person, not the job.** Unlike the General Schedule, SES members carry their rank with them. That is what lets an agency move them anywhere. - **Mobility.** A career executive can be reassigned to any SES position, in any location, on 15 days' notice. A 120-day moratorium protects them only in the first months after a new agency head or new supervising appointee arrives. ## The 2025–2026 lever: reassignment, not removal The Carter-era design was meant to give administrations a flexible, responsive senior corps. In 2025–26 that flexibility became the tool. Instead of firing career executives, which means adverse-action procedures and appeals, agencies **reassigned** them to posts they were likely to refuse or leave. OPM memoranda of January 20, 2025 and December 1, 2025 both encouraged agencies to use reassignment and to tighten performance ratings and performance-review boards. The effect is the same one the vault finds across the civil service. The protections are still on the books, but the fastest way to move a career executive out of a role never touches them ([[Federal Workforce Structure Tree]]). [[Schedule F]] and the newer [[Schedule G]] reach the policy layer below the SES. The SES itself gets moved around instead of fired. ## See also - [[Federal Workforce Structure Tree]] · [[Civil Service Reform Act of 1978]] · [[OPM]] - [[Competitive Service]] · [[Excepted Service]] · [[General Schedule]] · [[Schedule F]] · [[Schedule G]] - [[Reduction in Force]] · [[How a Federal Agency Is Dismantled]]