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Interdisciplinary Research Scientist

Department of Health and Human Services
Food and Drug Administration
National Center for Toxicological Research
This job announcement has closed

Summary

This position is located in the National Center for Toxicological Research (NCTR) which is a multi-disciplinary research center. NCTR's primary mission is to conduct peer-reviewed research and develop new scientific tools for the FDA to improve public health.

Overview

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Hiring complete
Open & closing dates
07/16/2020 to 07/22/2020
Salary
$91,231 to - $118,603 per year
Pay scale & grade
GS 13
Location
1 vacancy in the following location:
Jefferson, AR
Telework eligible
Yes—as determined by the agency policy.
Travel Required
Occasional travel - You may be expected to occasionally travel for this position.
Relocation expenses reimbursed
No
Appointment type
Permanent
Work schedule
Full-Time
Service
Competitive
Promotion potential
None
Job family (Series)
Supervisory status
No
Security clearance
Other
Drug test
No
Position sensitivity and risk
Non-sensitive (NS)/Low Risk
Trust determination process
Announcement number
FDA-NCTR-20-DE-10855152MP
Control number
573598200

This job is open to

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The public

U.S. Citizens, Nationals or those who owe allegiance to the U.S.

Career transition (CTAP, ICTAP, RPL)

Federal employees whose job, agency or department was eliminated and are eligible for priority over other applicants.

Duties

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  • Prioritizes, initiates, designs, and leads research projects to develop a broad scientific understanding pertaining to the characterization and mechanism of action of toxicological causes and effects of hazards and treatments of human diseases.
  • The incumbent initiates and maintains contacts with peers who are involved in common areas of research and provides oversight to staff members, including technical staff, postdoctoral scientists, and students.
  • The incumbent will plan, develop and conduct highly specialized research projects as they relate to the Division's and Center's overall mission.

Requirements

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Conditions of employment

  • Citizenship Requirement: You must be a U.S. Citizen to be considered for this advertisement unless explicitly stated otherwise.
  • Selective Service Registration: All applicants born male, on (or after) 12/31/1959, must be registered with the Selective Service System OR have an approved exemption. Visit www.SSS.gov for more info.
  • FDA participates in e-Verify: All new hires must complete the I-9 form; this information will be processed through e-Verify to determine your employment eligibility. If a discrepancy arises, you must take affirmative steps to resolve the matter.
  • Background Investigation Requirement: All employees must pass a security investigation. Failing to pass the background check may be grounds for removal or legal action. If hired, you may be subject to additional investigations at a later time.
  • You must meet ALL requirements by the closing date of this announcement to be considered. Only education, experience, and qualifications attained by this date will be considered. You must continue to meet all requirements through the hiring process.
  • Certification of Accuracy: All information concerning eligibility and qualification is subject to investigation and verification. False representation may be grounds for non-consideration, non-selection, or appropriate legal action.
  • Direct Deposit: You will be required to have all federal salary payments electronically deposited into a bank account with a financial institution of your choice.
  • Additional selections may be made from this vacancy, within the same geographical area, by other organizational elements from within FDA, through shared corporate recruiting activities.
  • A probationary and/or trial period for initial Federal employment may be required.

Qualifications

The position of Interdisciplinary Research Scientist falls under the 0401/0405/0415 occupational series. To qualify for this position at grade GS-13, you must meet the following:

Basic Requirements

Biologist, GS-0401

  1. Degree: biological sciences, agriculture, natural resource management, chemistry, or related disciplines appropriate to the position.

    OR

  2. Combination of education and experience: Courses equivalent to a major, as shown in A above, plus appropriate experience or additional education.


Pharmacologist, GS-0405

Degree: major in an appropriate biological, medical, veterinary, or physical science, or in pharmacy that included at least 30 semester hours in chemistry and physiology and 12 semester hours in pharmacology.

Toxicologist, GS- 0415

Degree: toxicology; or an appropriate discipline of the biological, medical, or veterinary sciences that included at least 30 semester hours in chemistry, biochemistry, or physiology, and 12 semester hours in toxicology.

AND

Minimum Qualifications

Specialized Experience. Specialized experience is experience that equipped the applicant with the particular knowledge, skills, and abilities to perform successfully the duties of the position, and that is typically in or related to the work of the position to be filled.
  • You must possess 1 year of specialized experience equivalent to the GS-12 in the Federal service that includes experience: experience in conducting and/or leading in vitro research activities related to drug-induced cardiotoxicity and in the conception and/or formulation of productive research ideas or approaches. Experience in evaluation and interpretation of scientific data for publication and presentations at scientific meetings and/or conferences.
NOTE: It is your responsibility to ensure your responses and appropriate documentation is submitted prior to the closing date. To verify your application is complete, log into your USAJOBS account, https://my.usajobs.gov/Account/Login, select the Application Status link and then select the More Information link for this position. The Details page will display the status of your application, the documentation received and processed, and any correspondence the agency has sent related to this application. Be sure that any uploaded documents you provide in your application are free of document security or compression which might render the document unreadable by our system.

IN DESCRIBING YOUR EXPERIENCE, PLEASE BE CLEAR AND SPECIFIC. WE WILL NOT MAKE ASSUMPTIONS REGARDING YOUR EXPERIENCE. Qualifications are based on breadth/level of experience. In addition to describing duties performed, applicants must provide the exact dates of each period of employment (from MM/YY to MM/YY) and the number of hours worked per week if part time. As qualification determinations cannot be made when resumes do not include the required information, failure to provide this information may result in disqualification. Applicants are encouraged to use the USAJOBS Resume Builder to develop their federal resume.

Education

You MUST submit a transcript which includes a list of courses, grades, completion dates, and quarter or semester hours earned by the closing date of the announcement..

Foreign Education:
If you are using education completed at 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. If you have transferred educational credit from a foreign institution to one in the U.S., you must still show that your foreign education was evaluated by an organization recognized by the Department of Education, even if that foreign education was accepted as transfer credit by a domestic college or university. For more information about this requirement, please visit the U.S. Department of Education website for Foreign Education Evaluation.

SUBMITTING YOUR TRANSCRIPTS:
Positions which are scientific or technical in nature often have very specific educational requirements. A transcript is required to verify educational achievement. Pay careful attention to the Qualifications and Education sections to identify vacancies where a transcript is required. Even if you hold a similar position or are a current employee, you are not exempt from transcript requirements.

Electronic Transcript Caution: If you have obtained your transcripts electronically, the file might contain security measures that could prevent our application system from reading the file. Therefore, you should consider asking the institution to provide the file in a non-secured electronic format. Alternatively, you could scan or take a photo of the printed copy of the transcript. If your uploaded transcript cannot be read by our system, you may receive consideration and credit for the information we can access.

See the Application Manager Documentation for tips on submitting your paper-based documents.

Additional information

For some advertisements, the Food & Drug Administration receives hundreds, even thousands, of applications from job-seekers. Because of this high level of interest in positions with the FDA, the agency reserves the option of setting an application number limit.

When an application limit is set, USAJOBS will close the vacancy at 11:59 pm Eastern Time on either:
(A) the day the limit is reached,
-OR-
(B) the pre-defined closing date of 07/22/2020, whichever comes first.

If the limit is reached before 11:59 pm ET, all applications in excess of the limit will continue to be accepted until 11:59 pm ET.

The application limit, if applicable, for this advertisement is: No limit.

For more information about announcement closing, see: https://www.usajobs.gov/Help/faq/job-announcement/expiration/

ADDITIONAL CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT:

  • If you are serving, or have served in the last 5 years (from 07/22/2020) as an Executive Branch political, Schedule C, or Non-career SES appointee, HHS/FDA may be required to obtain approval by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) prior to beginning employment. You can find out if you have held one of these appointment types by looking at your Standard Form 50s in your Electronic Official Personnel Folder (eOPF), in Section 5 where the legal authorities are listed. If you have served or are currently serving, you must provide a copy of your SF-50, Notification of Personnel Action, documenting this appointment. In addition, you will be required to respond to the question in the assessment and certify your responses to the questionnaire. Political Appointee FAQ - OPM
  • Special Appointing Authorities: If you are applying for eligibility based on a disability, veteran status, or under a career transition program, please pay careful attention to the Required Documents section for a detailed explanation of eligibility requirements to include supporting documentation.
  • Financial Disclosure: Please be advised that this position may be subject to FDA's prohibited financial interest regulation. If you are hired, you may be required to divest of certain financial interests. You are advised to seek additional information on this requirement from the hiring official before accepting any job offers.
  • Pre-Employment Physical: No
  • Drug Testing Requirement: No
  • License Requirement: No
  • Immunization Requirement: No
  • Mobility Agreement Required: No
  • Bargaining Unit Position: Yes, NTEU

How you will be evaluated

You will be evaluated for this job based on how well you meet the qualifications above.

Once the job opportunity announcement closes (at 11:59 pm Eastern Time on 07/22/2020), a review of your resume and supporting documentation will be conducted, the information will be compared against your responses to the assessment questionnaire to determine your eligibility for Federal employment, and then whether you are qualified for this particular position. If, after reviewing your resume and/or supporting documentation, a determination is made that you have inflated your responses when compared to your background information, you may be deemed ineligible, or your score may be adjusted to more accurately reflect your skills and abilities.

If you are referred to the hiring manager for consideration, you may be further evaluated based on an interview; review of requested work samples, writing samples, most recent performance evaluation(s), professional references, or results of an oral presentation or work-related test. Failure to comply with any of the additional assessment requirements will result in removal from further consideration.

Please follow all instructions carefully. Errors or omissions may affect your eligibility.

About Category Rating (DEU) Procedures (Basis for Rating):

  • Category rating procedures will be used to rate and rank candidates.
  • The answers you provide to the applicant self-assessment questions will be used, in conjunction with the supporting documents you include, and your resume, to determine your eligibility for Federal employment and your qualification for this position specifically.
  • Your application score is used to place you into one of three quality categories: "Best Qualified", "Well Qualified", and "Qualified". (The category assignment is a measure of the degree in which your background matches the competencies required for this position.)
  • The cut-off score for each quality category may vary from announcement to announcement, and is determined by each agency, in advance of the advertisement going live.
  • Category Rating does not add veterans preference points but protects the rights of veterans by placing them ahead of non-preference eligibles within each category. Preference eligible Vets who meet the minimum qualification requirements and who have a compensable service-connected disability of at least 30% must be listed in the highest quality category (except in the case of scientific or professional positions at the GS-9 level or higher).
  • Only applications in the Best Qualified category are referred to the hiring office for consideration. If a high volume of applications are from highly qualified preference eligible Veterans, FDA's HR office may elect to refer ONLY those preference eligible Veterans. If FDA receives a small number of applications, or if the score range of applications in the highest quality category is low enough, the Best Qualified category may be merged with the Well Qualified category.
Your qualifications will be evaluated on the following competencies (knowledge, skills, abilities and other characteristics). You do not need to respond to the KSA's directly, but your resume should contain sufficient information to demonstrate possession of the Competencies.
  1. Technical Competence
  2. Oral Communication
  3. Research
To preview the application assessment questions, click the link below:
https://apply.usastaffing.gov/ViewQuestionnaire/10855152

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