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

The Community Resilience Group conducts research and works with a wide range of stakeholders to provide tools to communities to help improve community resilience for all hazards, with a focus on the built environment(buildings and infrastructure systems) and the role they play in meeting the social needs of the community. If selected, you will contribute to research efforts in areas related to the Community Resilience Program (CRP) and Disaster Field Studies Program (DFSP). Key Responsibilities include: Data Collection and Analysis: Develop best practices for data collection and synthesis related to community resilience and post-disaster studies, leveraging current technologies such as geospatial and GIS-based tools. Conduct research focused on community resilience planning and infrastructure analysis for both current and future disaster scenarios, including climate-related risks. Support for the DFSP: Provide recommendations to update standard operating procedures, criteria, methods, and practices to enhance deployment team readiness for safe and effective field data collection. Assist in coordinating field response efforts following disasters and structural failures. Collect and analyze GIS-based data during field studies to inform disaster response and recovery efforts. Field and Deployment Activities: Participate in deployment and field study teams to gather primary data, assessing community performance, resilience, and the technical causes of damage and failures. Research and Development: Conduct studies to advance community resilience planning frameworks and risk assessment methodologies, including integrating climate change considerations into existing policies and plans. Develop methods to assess community performance and evaluate the impact of resilience actions across social, economic, physical, and natural systems for various disasters, shocks, and stressors. Reporting and Publications: Prepare and present research findings through reports and peer-reviewed publications. The ideal candidate should have expertise in one or more of the following areas: GIS, field data collection, natural hazards, disaster and community resilience, risk mitigation, post-storm investigations, emergency response, codes and standards, building damage, risk assessment, social science, wind engineering, meteorology, coastal inundation, forensic sciences, structural, fire protection, or earthquake engineering. Preferred skills include GIS data collection and analysis using ArcGIS.

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): A. A degree in behavioral or social science; or related disciplines appropriate to the position. OR B. A 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 C. 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. 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. A 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, applicants must have at least one year (52 weeks) of specialized experience equivalent to at least the GS-09 level (ZP-II at NIST). Specialized experience is defined as experience in supporting research on the performance, failure, and recovery of materials, structures, systems, or communities before and after natural or human-caused events (e.g., collapses, storms, fires, earthquakes). OR A master's or equivalent graduate degree. OR A combination of graduate level education and specialized experience. 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. 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 before a final offer of employment.

Use of foreign education for qualifications. An accredited organization must evaluate education completed outside of the U.S. 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 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]