The Department of Commerce ranked top 5 in the 2023 Best Places to Work in the Federal Government amongst large agencies for the 12th year in a row! The ranking showcases the Department's continued commitment to increasing our employee engagement, employee satisfaction, and positive perceptions towards diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion. This notice is issued under direct-hire authority to recruit new talent to occupations for which NIST has a severe shortage of candidates.

Duties

NIST works with industry and science to advance innovation and improve quality of life. We're looking for a Social Scientist/General Engineer (Interdisciplinary) to join our team! If selected, you will be responsible for conducting systematic & independent research & providing technical leadership in the fields relevant to NIST's Community Resilience Program (CRP) and Disaster and Failure Studies Program (DFSP): Provide technical leadership to develop data collection best practices for community resilience & post-disaster field studies, including use of GIS-based tools Lead the development of training on data collection technologies & tools for other NIST field responders to collect technical data Formulate & conduct independent community resilience planning &/or infrastructure analysis research, including risk assessment methodologies, for scenarios that include current & future disasters, & integrates climates change considerations into existing policies and plans. Support the Director of DFSP: Update & execute standard operating procedures, criteria, methods, & practices to promote team readiness for safe field data collection Lead analyses of GIS-based disaster data Organize field response efforts following disasters & structural failures Independently collect & validate primary data to characterize community performance & resilience Conduct independent research to advance metrology of community resilience & disaster research or building performance Provide technical leadership & expertise, particularly in the areas of GIS-based tools & analyses Formulate novel methods to characterize & evaluate the performance of communities & impacts of resilience actions on social, economic, physical & natural systems at the community scale for weather, climate, & other disaster shocks & stressors Disseminate results through presentations & research & guidance documents Participate in national working groups and committees The ideal candidate should have the knowledge of one or more of these technical areas: geographic information systems, field data collection, natural hazards, disaster resilience, community resilience, risk mitigation, post-storm investigations, emergency response & evacuation, codes & standards, building damage, risk, social science, wind engineering, meteorology, coastal inundation, forensic sciences, structural engineering, fire protection engineering, earthquake engineering. GIS data collection & data analysis with ArcGIS is a preferred skill.

Requirements

• U.S. citizenship
• Males born after 12-31-59 must be registered for Selective Service
• Suitable for Federal employment
• Bargaining Unit Position: No

Qualifications

Basic Requirements (if applying under 0101): Degree: behavioral or social science; or related disciplines appropriate to the position. OR Combination of education and experience that provided the applicant with knowledge of one or more of the behavioral or social sciences equivalent to a major in the field. OR Four years of appropriate experience that demonstrated that the applicant has acquired knowledge of one or more of the behavioral or social sciences equivalent to a major in the field. Basic Requirements (if applying under 0801 series): A. Degree in 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), 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, 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. In addition to the basic requirements above for BOTH the 0101 and 0801 series, all applicants must have at least one year (52 weeks) of specialized experience at the GS-12 (ZP-III at NIST) grade level. Specialized experience is defined as experience with working closely with and leading multi-disciplinary teams to conduct peer-reviewed research on the performance, failure, and recovery of materials, components, structures, systems, or communities before and after structural collapses, natural disasters, or human-initiated incidents (e.g., wind, storms, hurricanes, fires, earthquakes). Experience includes analyzing pre- and post-event phases, and encompasses resilience planning and recovery within the peer-reviewed research. Experience refers to paid and unpaid experience, including volunteer work done. We will credit all qualifying volunteer experience in your application. The qualification requirements in this vacancy announcement are based on the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Qualification Standards Handbook. Applicant Reconsideration

Education

This position allows applicants to qualify with education. Transcripts must be submitted to validate that the education requirement has been met. Unofficial transcripts will be accepted in the application package. However, an official copy will be required prior to a final offer of employment.

Education completed outside of the U.S. must be evaluated by an accredited organization to ensure that it is comparable to education received in accredited institutions in the U.S. Click here to view a listing of accredited organizations from the Department of Education's website. A copy of the foreign education evaluation (containing the results with a course by course listing) is required with your application.

Contacts

• Address Materials and Structural Systems Division 100 Bureau Drive Gaithersburg, MD 20899 US
• Name: Evelyn Carter-Hopkins
• Email: [email protected]