Physical Scientist
What you'd do
This position is located in Washington, D.C. and Concord, New Hampshire, Resilience/Federal Insurance Directorate/EMD/ER Branch. The ideal candidate for this position is experienced staying abreast of and applying the latest state-of-the-art technology, emergent research, applied science, and policy changes associated with flood hazard and risk identification.
Major duties
What will I do in this position if hired? In this position, you will serve as the Physical Scientist. Typical assignments include: Serving as an advisor and technical authority on policy, program, and implementable planning issues within the physical science field of study related to flood hazards. Planning and coordinating FEMA programs in unexplored areas where new technologies and scientific methods are needed to advance flood hazard and risk assessment. Coordinating the efforts of technical personnel conducting conceptual studies and analyses of interconnected flood hazard problems involving advanced technology and complex relations or programmatic issues. Serving as an agency leader of groups that conduct expert technical reviews of precedent-setting scientific studies, research, and analysis in areas such as hydrology, oceanography or other related flood hazard fields. Defending flood assessment policy before national organizations, government agencies, state and local governments, industry, academia, consumer organizations, Congress, and/or the scientific community. Serving as an authoritative expert in flooding on task forces, committees, or study groups charged with considering highly complex policy issues or problems related to flood hazard and risk assessment. What else do I need to know? At FEMA, our mission is to help people before, during and after disasters, and every employee at FEMA has a role in emergency management. Every FEMA employee has regular and recurring emergency management responsibilities, though not every position requires routine deployment to disaster sites. All positions are subject to recall around the clock for emergency management operations, which may require irregular work hours, work at locations other than the official duty station, and may include duties other than those specified in the employee's official position description. Travel requirements in support of emergency operations may be extensive in nature (weeks to months), with little advance notice, and may require employees to relocate to emergency sites with physically austere and operationally challenging conditions.
What you need to qualify
Current Federal employees must have served 52 weeks at the next lower grade or equivalent grade band in the Federal service. The qualification requirements listed below must be met by the closing date of this announcement. To qualify for this position at the GS-14 level, you must possess one full year of specialized experience equivalent to at least the GS-13 level in the Federal government, which has equipped you with the skills needed to successfully perform the duties of the position. Experience may be obtained in the federal government, a state or local government, or private sector, and must demonstrate the following: Applying new scientific methods to come up with new ways to solve flood causation and risk assessment, AND, Creating new research for estimating impact to the built environment using hazard data and damage functions, fragility functions, or building damage probability factors, AND Developing specifications, requirements and cost estimates for research or engineering studies in excess of a million dollars. AND Individual Occupational Requirements Degree: physical science, engineering, or mathematics that included 24 semester hours in physical science and/or related engineering science such as mechanics, dynamics, properties of materials, and electronics. Or Combination of education and experience -- education equivalent to one of the majors shown in A above that included at least 24 semester hours in physical science and/or related engineering science, plus appropriate experience or additional education. Please read the following important information to ensure we have everything we need to consider your application: Do not copy and paste the duties, specialized experience, or occupational assessment questionnaire from this announcement into your resume as that will not be considered a demonstration of your qualifications for this position. Please limit your resume to two pages. The USAJOBS database will not allow an applicant to submit an application that includes a resume over two pages. Your resume serves as the basis for experience related qualification determinations, and you must highlight your most relevant and significant work experience and education (if applicable), as it relates to this job opportunity. Please use your own words, be clear, and specific when describing your work history. We cannot make assumptions regarding your experience. Are you qualifying based on your work experience? Qualifications are based on your ability to demonstrate in your resume that you possess one year of the specialized experience for this announcement at a comparable scope and responsibility. To ensure all of the essential information is in your resume, we encourage you to use the USAJOBS online Resume Builder. If you choose to use your own resume, it must contain the following information organized by experience/position: (1) job title, (2) name of employer, (3) start and end dates of each period of employment (from MM/DD/YY to MM/DD/YY), (4) detailed description of duties performed, accomplishments, and related skills, and (5) hours worked per week (part-time employment will be prorated in crediting experience). Federal experience/positions must also include the grade level, occupational series and dates in which you held each grade level. Are you a current or former FEMA Reservist/Disaster Assistance Employee (DAE)? To accurately credit your experience from intermittent positions and Reservist Deployments, you must list the dates (from MM/DD/YY to MM/DD/YY) of deployments that are relevant to your qualifying experience, along with the job title and specific duties you were responsible for during each deployment. Determining length of General or Specialized Experience is dependent on the above information. Failure to provide the above information in your resume may result in your application being found "not qualified." 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). Volunteer work helps build critical competencies, knowledge, and skills, and provides valuable training and experience that translates directly to paid employment. You will receive credit for all qualifying experience, including volunteer experience. For additional information on crediting experience and/or education, please reference the OPM General Schedule Qualification Standards.
Before you apply
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