Program Specialist
What you'd do
The position is located at the George E. Wahlen VA Medical Center (VAMC) in the Engineering department. The Program Specialist in the Engineering Service acts as executive support for the Chief Engineer, Assistant Chief Engineer, Manager of Operations and Maintenance, the Supervisory Engineer of the Projects Section, the Supervisory Biomedical Engineer, the Chief of Safety, the Cercla Program Manager, and the supervisors overseeing the Operations and Maintenance sections.
Major duties
Duties include but are not limited to the following: Provide specialized administrative management to the Occupational Health and Safety team. Reviews policies and regulations related to time and leave. They obtain data from section supervisors and submit employees' requests for overtime. Provides clerical support and coordination to the Engineering and Occupational Health and Safety executive staff and approving official. Performs a variety of receptionist, timekeeping, record-keeping, and miscellaneous duties. Utilizes a variety of automated systems to enter, update, revise, sort, and calculate data; monitor purchase requests; process receipts; and monitor active and delinquent invoices. Develop reports and spreadsheets, obtain, organize, file, and retrieve reports for briefing and presentation purposes. Assists in the development of local policies and procedures for establishing, operating, and assessing the effectiveness of engineering and safety support systems and compliance with agency policy. Incumbents shall have a solid understanding of basic occupational safety and health concepts and responsibilities. Responsible for educating staff and record management for project file records, credit card records, utility billing, etc. Review accident reports and code each using special codes to record the type, locations, severity, cause, and corrective actions, and transfer this information to computer records. Promotion Potential: The selectee may be promoted to the full performance level without further competition when all regulatory, qualification, and performance requirements are met. Selection at a lower grade level does not guarantee promotion to the full performance level. Work Schedule: Monday-Friday, 7:00am to 3:30pm Compressed/Flexible: No Telework: This position may be authorized for telework on an Ad-hoc basis. Telework eligibility will be discussed during the interview process. Virtual: This is not a virtual position. Position Description/PD#: Program Specialist/PD148450 Relocation/Recruitment Incentives: Not authorized. Critical Skills Incentive (CSI): Not approved. Permanent Change of Station (PCS): Not authorized.
What you need to qualify
To qualify for this position, applicants must meet all requirements by the closing date of this announcement, 07/20/2026. Time-In-Grade Requirement: Applicants who are current Federal employees and have held a GS grade any time in the past 52 weeks must also meet time-in-grade requirements by the closing date of this announcement. For a GS-7 position you must have served 52 weeks at the GS-5. For a GS-9 position you must have served 52 weeks at the GS-7. The grade may have been in any occupation, but must have been held in the Federal service. An SF-50 that shows your time-in-grade eligibility must be submitted with your application materials. If the most recent SF-50 has an effective date within the past year, it may not clearly demonstrate you possess one-year time-in-grade, as required by the announcement. In this instance, you must provide an additional SF-50 that clearly demonstrates one-year time-in-grade. Note: Time-In-Grade requirements also apply to former Federal employees applying for reinstatement as well as current employees applying for Veterans Employment Opportunities Act of 1998 (VEOA) appointment. You may qualify based on your experience and/or education as described below: Specialized Experience GS-7: You must have one year of specialized experience equivalent to at least the next lower grade GS-5 in the normal line of progression for the occupation in the organization. Examples of specialized experience would typically include, but are not limited to: Guiding, assisting, establishing, monitoring and tracking the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of programs; arranging meetings and preparing reports/communications; collecting and reviewing administrative data to identify, quantify and resolve organizational problems; utilizing automated systems to enter, update, revise, sort, and calculate data; employee timekeeping, budgetary and fiscal management; assigning, performing and reporting on provider audits.OR, Education: Applicants may substitute education for the required experience. To qualify based on education for this grade level you must have one (1) full year of graduate level education or have superior academic achievement. OR, Combination: Applicants may also combine education and experience to qualify at this level. You must have an combination of specialized experience and education beyond a bachelor's degree to qualify at the GS-7 level. Specialized Experience GS-9: You must have one year of specialized experience equivalent to at least the next lower grade GS-5 in the normal line of progression for the occupation in the organization. Examples of specialized experience would typically include, but are not limited to: Guiding, assisting, establishing, monitoring and tracking the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of programs; arranging meetings and preparing reports/communications; collecting and reviewing administrative data to identify, quantify and resolve organizational problems; utilizing automated systems to enter, update, revise, sort, and calculate data; employee timekeeping, budgetary and fiscal management; assigning, performing and reporting on provider audits; training new staff on specific programs and training items; coordinating through the respective managers all the training programs as they relate to the staff, meeting all mandatory training requirements; purchasing for supplies and services; tracking and routing purchase requests. OR, Education: Applicants may substitute education for the required experience. To qualify based on education for this grade level you must have one two (2) years of progressively higher-level graduate education, or masters or equivalent graduate degree, or LL.B. or J.D., in a related field of the position to be filled. OR, Combination: Applicants may also combine education and experience to qualify at this level. You must have an combination of specialized experience and education in excess of the first year (18 semester hours) of graduate school may be used to qualify applicants for the GS-09 level. For more information on these qualification standards, please visit the United States Office of Personnel Management's website at https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/classification-qualifications/general-schedule-qualification-standards/.
Before you apply
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