Qualifications
Minimum Qualifications
In order to qualify, you must meet the experience requirements. 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). Your resume must clearly describe your relevant experience; if qualifying based on education, your transcripts will be required as part of your application.
GG-14 Specialized Experience: One year of work performed at the next lower grade/level in the federal service (GG/GS-13) or other equal federal pay systems, or the public sector as described below. There is no substitution of education for specialized experience at the GG-14 grade level.
Examples of Specialized Experience: applying knowledge and skill of the principles, methods, and techniques of engineering applicable to the operations and maintenance of wastewater treatment facilities, flood control channels and structures, and field office facilities; applying knowledge of engineering fields such as civil, mechanical, environmental, constructional, design, and electrical to resolve problems and/or develop proposals for the operations, maintenance, repair, and construction of field office facilities; assessing the condition of infrastructure components and facilities through physical inspections and the development of an infrastructure condition-tracking program; advising and approving the procurement and replacement of field office equipment; evaluating recommendations and facts, and preparing specifications; overseeing and approving operations activities for the safety of dams, wastewater treatment plants, construction projects, power plants, and facilities operations; reviewing reports, work plans, capital plans, activities and work performed by contractors; preparing, reviewing, and evaluating scopes of work, proposals, and cost estimates for maintenance activities; providing civil engineering guidance and input on the planning, design, construction, and rehabilitation of existing and/or new structures and facilities; reviewing designs to ensure the constructability, function, and that design assumptions are correct; planning moderate to substantially complex project assignments; planning, budgeting and coordinating efforts and project execution; interpreting and applying Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and other governmental policies, regulations, and standards to solve specific problems relating to program areas; skill in written and oral communication to interact effectively with personnel of state and federal representatives and officials; resolving unofficial and official employee grievances; supervising administrative missions to include internal controls, budgeting, long-range planning, infrastructure maintenance and operations, and local government coordination; hiring, evaluating, and disciplining division level staff, either directly or through subordinate supervisors; conducting mid-year and end-of-year evaluations for employees within allotted deadlines; and equitably assigning work to employees based on priorities, the difficulty and requirements of assignments, and the skills and capabilities of the employees.
College Teaching:College-level teaching of engineering may be considered as professional experience in engineering. In accepting and evaluating teaching experience, all specific qualification requirements pertaining to the evaluation of professional experience such as grade level, responsibility, scope, specialization, and knowledge required are also applicable to the evaluation of teaching experience. Teaching experience that is accompanied by a significant amount of research, direction of research, investigative, or similar work may be credited at full value in meeting a specific requirement for research, investigative, or similar experience.
Education
Basic Education Requirement
Education:
A. Degree: Bachelor's degree (or higher degree) in 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;
OR
B. 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.
Foreign Education: If you are using education completed in foreign colleges or universities to meet the qualification requirements, you must show that the education credentials have been evaluated by a private organization that specializes in interpretation of foreign education programs and such education has been deemed equivalent to that gained in an accredited U.S. education program; or full credit has been given for the courses at a U.S. accredited college or university. For further information, visit:
http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ous/international/usnei/us/edlite-visitus-forrecog.html .