Duties
This specific position will be filled in Lanham, MD. Additional duty locations are listed for future vacancies and/or vacancies that may be filled throughout the Department of Commerce. Please select locations for which you want to be considered.
As a Supervisory Physical Scientist/General Engineer, you will perform the following duties:
- Oversee, manage, and direct multidisciplinary teams of engineers and scientists charged with the design, maintenance, installation, and operation of highly specialized mechanical instruments used to collect, measure, and communicate scientific data.
- Provide leadership, ensuring application of appropriate project development processes for program management, systems engineering, budget development and execution, and contract evaluation, negotiation, selection, and execution.
- Serve as Subject Matter Expert (SME), Technical Monitor (TM), and Contracting Officer Technical Representative (COTR) for contracts pertaining to acquisition, development, sustainment, and maintenance of existing and planned satellite flight and ground assets.
- Provide technical direction for the development, implementation, and management of integrated, sound, and effective projects that are responsive to identified national and agency needs for environmental data from satellites.
Qualifications
BASIC REQUIREMENTS: This position may be filled with series 0801 (General Engineering) / 1301 (General Physical Science). Each series requires applicants to meet a Basic Education Requirement in addition to at least one full year (52 weeks) of specialized experience or a substitution of education for experience in order to be found minimally qualified. Transcripts must be submitted with your application package. You MUST meet one of the following basic education requirements:
To qualify for the 1301 series:
EDUCATION:
- Degree: physical science, engineering, or mathematics that included 24 semester hours in physical science and/or related engineering science such as mechanics, dynamics, properties of materials, and electronics.
OR
- Combination of education and experience: education equivalent to one of the majors shown in A above that included at least 24 semester hours in physical science and/or related engineering science, plus appropriate experience or additional education.
To qualify for the 0801 series:
EDUCATION:
- 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
- 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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.)
Note: An applicant who meets the basic requirements as specified in A or B above, except as noted under B.1., may qualify for positions in any branch of engineering unless selective factors indicate otherwise.
-AND-
SPECIALIZED EXPERIENCE: 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.
To qualify at the ZP-5 or GS-15 level:
SPECIALIZED EXPERIENCE: In addition to meeting the Basic Requirements above, applicants must also possess one full year (52 weeks) of specialized experience equivalent to the ZP-4 or GS-14 in the Federal service. Specialized experience MUST include all of the following:
- Leading satellite and ground system projects which could include: performing installation, operations, design, engineering or science tasks, maintenance, or sustainment tasks;
- Negotiating and executing contracts pertaining to the acquisition or maintenance of existing and planned satellite flight and ground assets; and
- Managing teams, tracking budgets, or planning activities to meet organizational priorities.
Application deadline: July 30, 2026
Salary range: $147,945 – $197,200 per year
