General Engineer

US Bureau of Industry and Security; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 150,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

The U.S. Department of Commerce, Office of National Security Controls, seeks a General Engineer (GS-15) in Washington, DC to apply engineering principles to assess commodities and technologies for export control and regulatory decisions.

Qualified applicants will have engineering education or equivalent experience and at least one year of specialized experience at the GS-14 level, with strong written and verbal communication and collaboration across disciplines.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in engineering with ABET accreditation or equivalent education.
• One year of specialized experience at GS-14 or equivalent.
• Experience in export control, licensing, or regulatory decision is preferred but not required.

Responsibilities

• Apply engineering principles to assess the technical characteristics and applications of commodities, technologies, or systems to support export control, licensing, or regulatory decision.
• Prepare technical analyses and communicate complex information to leadership and stakeholders to inform policy and program decisions.

Education

ABET-accredited engineering degree or equivalent

Job description

This vacancy is for a General Engineer in the Office of National Security Controls within the Department of Commerce. Qualification requirements in the vacancy announcements are based on the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Qualification Standards Handbook, which contains federal qualification standards. This handbook is available on the Office of Personnel Management's website located at: https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/classification-qualifications/general-schedule-qualification-standards/#url=Occupational-Series Applicants must possess one year of specialized experience equivalent in difficulty and responsibility to the next lower grade level in the Federal Service. Specialized experience is experience that has equipped the applicant with the particular competencies/knowledge, skills and abilities to successfully perform the duties of the position. This experience need not have been in the federal government. 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.

Basic Education Requirement:

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) 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:

To qualify at the GS-15 grade level, you must possess one full year (52 weeks) of specialized experience equivalent to the GS-14 in the Federal service or its non federal equivalency.

Specialized experience is defined as:

Applying engineering principles to assess the technical characteristics and applications of commodities, technologies, or systems to support export control, licensing, or regulatory decision;

Applying export license applications, commodity classifications, and technical information to evaluate national security, or technology transfer;

Serving as a leading engineer, coordinating and collaborating with engineering and program management personnel on complex, cross-disciplinary projects that integrate technologies across multiple commodities and engineering domains, ensuring technical alignment, resolving technical issues, and contributing to project outcomes that inform policy and program decisions;

Preparing technical analyses, summaries, or reports and communicating complex technical information to leadership, internal stakeholders, external stakeholders, or other relevant audiences to explain engineering concepts, assessment results, and policy-related considerations.