Clarification from the agency

See Who May Apply under Requirements for more information on who is eligible to apply for this position.

Duties include but are not limited to:
-Performs flood hazard analyses and/or water resource planning and operations studies such as flood frequency analysis and volume frequency analysis of gaged and ungaged watersheds; flood risk analysis including uncertainty; analysis of surface water and groundwater supplies including seasonality and variability; analysis of agricultural and non-agricultural water demands including water conservation; or modeling and evaluation of water management and operations strategies and alternatives.
-Plans, performs, coordinates, and directs comprehensive hydrologic and water resources engineering studies of regulated and unregulated river systems and infrastructure, including collection, validation, and management of hydrologic and climate data; analysis of hydrologic extremes including floods and droughts; and/or modeling and analysis of water budgets including precipitation, runoff, infiltration, recharge, evaporation, evapotranspiration, soil moisture and groundwater storage, and/or reservoir storage and diversions.
-Develops, utilizes, and maintains complex numerical, mathematical, and/or statistical models for analysis of water supplies and demands, river and reservoir operations, hydrologic hazards, or related analyses.
-Applies appropriate statistical methods to analyze, visualize, and interpret observed and simulated hydrologic and climate conditions to address hydrologic and water resources issues, including univariate and multivariate analyses, timeseries analysis, data reduction and clustering, and statistical hypothesis tests.
-Develops computer codes/applications for data management and automation of data processing, data analysis, and/or modeling workflows using a variety of programming methods.
-Provides peer review and technical mentorship, training, and advice in the areas of hydrology and water resources engineering.-Prepares technical documentation, reports, and publications for hydrologic and water resource engineering studies.
-Delivers effective oral presentations and briefings to diverse audiences including team members, clients, leadership, and external agencies. Tailors presentations and briefings to the target audience.
-Develops, monitors, and manages project plans detailing scope, schedule, and budget. Proactively identifies and addresses issues to prevent adverse impacts on schedule and budget, manages changes, and leads or coordinates technical teams.
-Establishes collaborative teams, encourages and analyzes diverse viewpoints, and works with others to achieve collaborative solutions to complex problems.
-Effectively collaborates and coordinates with fellow employees, colleagues, supervisors/managers, and/or clients and handles difficult and unpredicted problems.
-Effectively mentors and teaches others, provides constructive feedback, identifies training needs, and coaches others on how to perform tasks.

Conditions of employment

You must be a U.S. Citizen or U.S. National.
You must be suitable for federal employment, determined by a background investigation.
You must submit a resume and supporting documentation (see Required Documents).
You must meet any minimum education and/or experience requirements (see Qualifications).
You must submit transcript(s) to verify education requirements (see Qualifications/Education).

Who May Apply:

• Career Transition Assistance Plan (CTAP)
• Interagency Career Transition Assistance Plan (ICTAP)

Qualifications

To qualify for the Civil Engineer GS-0810-13, you must meet BOTH the Basic Education Requirement and the Specialized Experience Requirement. Your resume must clearly describe your relevant experience. A copy of your unofficial transcripts must be provided with your application.

Basic Education Requirement: To be eligible for consideration, you must meet both the Basic Education Requirement and Specialized Experience Requirement for this position, having a:

A. Degree: Engineering. To be acceptable, the program must: (1) lead to a bachelor's degree in a school of engineering with at least one program accredited by 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)1, 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)2 examination or any other written test required for professional registration by an engineering licensure board in the various States, the District of Columbia, Guam, and 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 the basic requirements under paragraph A. The courses must be fully acceptable toward meeting the requirements of an engineering program as described in paragraph A.
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 bachelor's 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. (The above examples of related curricula are not all inclusive.)

AND

Specialized Experience Requirement: In addition to meeting the basic education requirement, you must also meet the following for the GS-0810-13 grade level. Specialized experience is obtained after the requirements noted under 'Basic Education Requirements' are met. The HR Office must be able to determine that the applicant meets the following specialized experience requirement - this information must be clearly supported in the resume. You must include months, years and hours per week worked to receive credit for your work and/or volunteer experience. One year of specialized experience is equivalent to 12 months at 40 hours per week. Part-time hours are prorated. You will not receive any credit for experience that does not indicate exact hours per week or is listed as "varies".

To qualify at the GS-13 grade level, you must possess one full year of specialized experience comparable in scope and responsibility of the GS-12 grade level in the Federal service (obtained in either the public or private sectors). Examples of specialized experience include, but are not limited to, hydrologic and climate data analysis, flood hydrology or meteorology studies, hydrologic and/or water quality modeling, river and reservoir systems modeling, or analysis of water supplies and demand to inform water resources planning, design, or operations. Additionally, applicants must have experience using teamwork to address complex hydrology and water resources issues and preparing written reports and oral presentations documenting data, methodologies, recommendations, and conclusions related to hydrologic and water resource engineering studies.

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 can provide valuable training and experience that translates directly to paid employment. You will receive credit for all qualifying experience, including volunteer experience.

Time-In-Grade: Current career or career-conditional employees of the Federal government, or former career or career-conditional employees, who have a break in service of less than one year, are required to meet the time-in-grade restriction of one year of Federal experience at the next lower-grade, with few exceptions outlined in 5 CFR 300.603(b).

You must meet all Eligibility and Qualification requirements, including time-in-grade restrictions and any selective placement factors if applicable, by 04/10/2026.

How you will be evaluated

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

Your qualifications will be evaluated based on your application materials (e.g., resume, supporting documents), the responses you provide to the application questionnaire, and the result of the additional assessments required for this position. You will be assessed on the following Competencies (knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics):

• Civil Engineering
• Hydrology
• Oral Communication
• Project Management
• Teaching Others
• Teamwork
• Technical Competence
• Writing

In order to be considered for this position, you must complete all required steps in the process. In addition to the application and application questionnaire, this position requires successful completion of additional assessment(s), including a and a written phased assessment (Phasing Questionnaire). These assessments measure the critical competencies listed above that are required to successfully perform the job.

The application questionnaire can be previewed here: https://apply.usastaffing.gov/ViewQuestionnaire/12929672

Your answers will be verified against information provided in your resume. Your resume must clearly support the responses to all the questions by addressing experience, education, and/or training relevant to this position. You must make a fair and accurate assessment of your qualifications. If a determination is made that you have rated yourself higher than what is apparent in the description of your experience, competencies, skills, and/or education/training (or that your resume/application is incomplete), you could be rated ineligible or your score could be lowered.

For evaluating the quality of candidates for referral to the selecting official, a three-phased process will be used.
1. Occupational Questionnaire.
2. Written Phased Assessment Questionnaire reviewed and rated by a SME Panel.
3. Those candidates who score as best qualified will be referred to the selecting official for consideration.

Applicants who apply under this job opportunity announcement agree to have their application, associated documents and applicable personal information shared with other Bureaus/Offices within the Department of the Interior (DOI) who have vacancies with the same occupational series, grade, full performance level and in the same geographic location(s). Applying to this announcement does not replace the need to apply to other job opportunity announcements for which you wish to receive consideration. You may choose to opt in of having your information shared with other agencies when applying for this position. If an agency requests a copy of a certificate you are on, you will be notified.