This article aims to identify aspects that influence the expression of competencies of professionals in the area of forensic science in a Brazilian public organization. This transversal, descriptive-exploratory study used qualitative methods, through research on organizational documents related to the theme that were necessary to understand the organizational context, interviews with nineteen managers who work in the forensic area, and a focus group with experts in the area of criminal forensics. Two categories of aspects (situational and individual) were identified, and these were further subdivided into eleven subcategories: Situational (material support, physical environment, policies and practices of people management, work demand, management support, psychosocial support, criteria for evaluation of the results, organizational structure and institutional autonomy) and individual (motivation for work and strategies for confronting adverse situations). The research participants evaluated support material and the physical environment more favorably, while also considering motivation as an important predictive variable to express the competencies of the job. The results showed that there are aspects of perception of organizational support similar to those found in the literature in other work contexts, and specific factors were found that were not observed in previous studies and not measured in the context of forensics activity.