This position is being filled under the Direct Hire Authority (DHA) Bachelors Degree for Scientific and Engineering Positions (STRLs) authorized by 85 FR 78829 dtd 12/07/2020.
Who May Apply: US Citizens
In order to qualify, you must meet the education and or experience requirements described below. Experience refers to paid and unpaid experience, including volunteer work done through National Service programs (e.g., Peace Corps, AmeriCorps) and other organizations (e.g., professional; philanthropic; religious; spiritual; community; student; social). You will receive credit for all qualifying experience, including volunteer experience. Your resume must clearly describe your relevant experience; if qualifying based on education, your transcripts will be required as part of your application. Additional information about transcripts is
in this document.
Qualified candidates must meet the Basic Requirement for the Interdisciplinary position.
In addition to meeting the Basic Requirement, applicants must have one year of specialized experience at the DB-03 (GS-12 grade level or higher equivalency).Specialized Experience:
One year of specialized experience equivalent to the next lower grade or band is required. It is defined as one year of specialized experience equivalent to the DB-03 pay band (GS-12 equivalent or higher) in the Federal Service that includes: 1)Applying applied research concepts toward the development of signal collection techniques, signal processing and/or exploitation of Signals Intelligence/Electronic Intelligence data; 2)Prototyping radio frequency signal processing techniques within industry standard engineering/software development packages/environments (e.g. MATLAB, Python, C++, etc.); 3) Integrating signal/data processing techniques onto Radio Frequency Sensors/Receivers and Software Defined Radios with verification of technique performance against a given specification; AND 4) Developing radio frequency signal detection and classification techniques utilizing Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning methods.
Basic Requirement for Engineer (0830,0850, 0854 and 0855 Series):
A. Degree: Engineering. To be acceptable, the program must:
(1) lead to a bachelor's degree (or higher degree) in a school of engineering with at least one program accredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET);
OR
(2) include differential and integral calculus and courses (more advanced than first-year physics and chemistry) in five of the following seven areas of engineering science or physics: (a) statics, dynamics; (b) strength of materials (stress-strain relationships); (c) fluid mechanics, hydraulics; (d) thermodynamics; (e) electrical fields and circuits; (f) nature and properties of materials (relating particle and aggregate structure to properties); and (g) any other comparable area of fundamental engineering science or physics, such as optics, heat transfer, soil mechanics, or electronics.
ORB. Combination of Education and Experience: College-level education, training, and/or technical experience that furnished (1) a thorough knowledge of the physical and mathematical sciences underlying engineering, and (2) a good understanding, both theoretical and practical, of the engineering sciences and techniques and their applications to one of the branches of engineering. The adequacy of such background must be demonstrated by one of the following:
1. Professional registration or licensure - Current registration as an Engineer Intern (EI), Engineer in Training (EIT), or licensure as a Professional Engineer (PE) by any State, the District of Columbia, Guam, or Puerto Rico. Absent other means of qualifying under this standard, those applicants who achieved such registration by means other than written test (e.g., State grandfather or eminence provisions) are eligible only for positions that are within or closely related to the specialty field of their registration. For example, an applicant who attains registration through a State Board's eminence provision as a manufacturing engineer typically would be rated eligible only for manufacturing engineering positions.
2. Written Test - Evidence of having successfully passed the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) examination, or any other written test required for professional registration, by an engineering licensure board in the various States, the District of Columbia, Guam, or Puerto Rico.
3. Specified academic courses - Successful completion of at least 60 semester hours of courses in the physical, mathematical, and engineering sciences and that included the courses specified in A above. The courses must be fully acceptable toward meeting the requirements of an engineering program.
4. Related curriculum - Successful completion of a curriculum leading to a bachelor's degree in an appropriate scientific field, e.g., engineering technology, physics, chemistry, architecture, computer science, mathematics, hydrology, or geology, may be accepted in lieu of a degree in engineering, provided the applicant has had at least 1 year of professional engineering experience acquired under professional engineering supervision and guidance. Ordinarily there should be either an established plan of intensive training to develop professional engineering competence, or several years of prior professional engineering-type experience, e.g., in interdisciplinary positions.
Basic Requirement for Computer Scientist (1550 series):
Degree: Bachelor's degree (or higher degree) in computer science or bachelor's degree (or higher degree) with 30 semester hours in a combination of mathematics, statistics, and computer science. At least 15 of the 30 semester hours must have included any combination of statistics and mathematics that included differential and integral calculus.
Transcripts are required to meet the Basic Education for the applicable series.
Some federal jobs allow you to substitute your education for the required experience in order to qualify. For this job, you must meet the qualification requirement using experience alone--no substitution of education for experience is permitted.