Geologist

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Duties

As a Geologist within the Geosciences and Environmental Change Science Center, some of your specific duties will include:

• Uses expert knowledge in geology and geochronology to integrate existing literature and available data to expand a geochronologic database. This includes the compilation and synthesis of existing data.
• Manages geospatial and geochronological datasets for geologic deposits and geomorphic features to advance project goals, facilitate resource assessments or inventories, and/or improve the characterization of geologic hazards.
• Uses graphics editing and data manipulation software to produce publication quality figures and/or geospatial analyses for inclusion in journal articles, professional reports, or presentation.
• Uses geographic information system (GIS) software, including ArcGIS Pro, to conduct geodatabase attribution and management in a collaborative enterprise GIS environment.
  
  

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Requirements

Conditions of Employment

Key Requirements

• Applicants must be U.S. Citizens.
• Suitable for Federal employment, as determined by background investigation.
• Selectee may be subject to serving a one-year probationary period.
• More requirements are listed under Qualifications and Other Information.
  
  

Are There Any Special Requirements for This Position?

• This vacancy is limited to the first 75 applications received and will close at midnight Eastern Time on the day this application limit is reached regardless of the closing date specified in this vacancy announcement. Any application received prior to midnight Eastern Time of the day the application limit is reached will be accepted and considered. You are strongly encouraged to submit all required supporting documents at the time of application should the vacancy close earlier than stated in this announcement due to the applicant limit being reached. Supporting documents will not be accepted once the vacancy announcement closes.
• A background investigation will be required for this position. Continued employment will be subject to the applicant's successful completion of a background security investigation and favorable adjudication. Failure to successfully meet these requirements will be grounds for termination.
• Throughout the recruitment and hiring process we will be communicating with you via email; therefore, it is imperative that the email address you provide when applying for this vacancy remains active. Should your email address change, please notify the point of contact identified in the vacancy announcement as soon as possible so that we can update our system.
  
  

Qualifications

DEFINITIONS:

Experience: One year of work experience is twelve months working full-time (at least 35-40 hours per week). Part-time experience can be pro-rated (i.e., a year at 20 hours per week is credited as 6 months of experience). If your position consisted of mixed duties, experience credit is given for the percentage of time that you spent on qualifying duties (i.e., if you held a position for 2 years, full-time, consisting of 25% personnel work and 75% budget work, and then applied for a budget position you could calculate your experience as follows: 2 years = 24 months. 24 months x 75% [percentage of time spent on budget duties] = 18 months of qualifying experience.)

Undergraduate Education: A year of undergraduate education is 30 semester hours, 45 quarter hours or the equivalent of college study. This education must have been obtained in an accredited college or university for which high school graduation or the equivalent was a prerequisite.

Graduate Education: In the absence of specific graduate program information, a year of graduate education is 18 semester hours or 27 quarter hours of graduate level college course work, or the number of credit hours the school attended has determined to represent 1 year of full-time study. This education must have been obtained in an accredited college or university.

BASIC EDUCATION REQUIREMENT: Applicants must meet either A or B below to satisfy the Basic Education Requirement for the Geologist occupational series at all grade levels.

• Successful completion of a full 4-year course of study in an accredited college or university leading to a bachelor's or higher degree in geology. In addition to the geology course work included in the degree, it must also have included or been supplemented by 20 additional semester hours in any combination of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biological science, structural, chemical, civil, mining or petroleum engineering, computer science, planetary geology, comparative planetology, geophysics, meteorology, hydrology, oceanography, physical geography, marine geology, and cartography; OR
• A combination of education and experience-course work as shown in "A" above (24 semester hours or the equivalent in geology plus 20 additional semester hours or the equivalent in any combination of courses as specified in "A" above), plus appropriate experience and/or additional education for a total of 4 years. The education or combined education and experience must be comparable in type, scope and thoroughness to that acquired through successful completion of a 4-year course of study as described in "A" above. (CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS ON HOW TO COMBINE EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE)
  
  

Minimum Requirement Gs-09

In addition to the Basic Education Requirement as stated above, applicants must meet one of the following to qualify for the GS-09 level:

One year of appropriate professional experience in geology that is equivalent to at least the GS-07 level in the Federal service. Examples of such experience may include performing a variety of observations, computations, compilations and analyses in assisting higher level Geologists in carrying out geologic assignments. This work experience would have involved following established methods and procedures, or detailed instructions; using some judgment in applying basic principles and procedures, and would have required a good general working knowledge of the principles and the theories of geology; OR

Two years of progressively higher-level graduate education (36 semester hours, 54 quarter hours or the equivalent) leading to a master's degree in geology or other directly related field of study or master's or equivalent graduate degree in geology or other directly related field of study if it provided the knowledge, skills and abilities necessary to do the work of the position to be filled; OR

A combination of successfully completed progressive graduate level education as described above that is beyond the first year of graduate study and professional experience, as described above. (CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS ON HOW TO COMBINE GRADUATE EDUCATION & EXPERIENCE)

You must meet all qualification and eligibility requirements for the position by the closing date of the announcement.

Education

• 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.
• Foreign Education: Education completed in colleges or universities outside the United States may be used to meet the above requirements. You must provide acceptable documentation that the foreign education is comparable to that received in an accredited educational institution in the United States. For more information on how foreign education is evaluated, visit: https://www.usgs.gov/about/organization/science-support/human-capital/how-foreign-education-evaluated-federal-jobs .
  
  

Additional information

Other Information

• Applicants who include vulgar, offensive, or inappropriate language or information in their application package will be ineligible for further consideration for this position.
• Under Executive Order 11935, only United States citizens and nationals (residents of American Samoa and Swains Island) may compete for civil service jobs. Agencies are permitted to hire non-citizens only in very limited circumstances where there are no qualified citizens available for the position.
• USGS employees are subject to Title 43, USC Section 31(a) and may not: (a) have any personal, private, direct or indirect interest in lands or mineral wealth of lands under survey; (b) have any substantial personal, private, direct or indirect interests in any private mining or mineral enterprise doing business with the United States; or (c) execute surveys or examinations for private parties or corporations.
• The application contains information subject to the Privacy Act (P.L. 93-579, 5 USC 552a). The information is used to determine qualifications for employment, and is authorized under Title 5, USC, Section 3302 and 3361.
• DOI uses E-Verify to confirm the employment eligibility of all newly hired employees. To learn more about E-Verify, including your rights and responsibilities, please visit www.dhs.gov/E-Verify.
• The Department of the Interior (DOI) places a high value on diversity of experience and cultural perspectives and encourages applications from all interested eligible candidates. Diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) are fundamental principles that guide the Department and allow us to successfully achieve our mission.
• THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER.
  
  

Agency Benefits:

• USGS has determined that the duties of this position are suitable for telework and the selectee may be allowed to telework in accordance with the DOI Telework policy and with supervisor approval. The official worksite for the selectee is the duty station identified in this vacancy announcement. The selectee will typically report to this duty location on a regular and recurring weekly basis.
• For additional information on our internal telework policy, please reference the Department of the Interior Telework Handbook at: https://www.doi.gov/telework/policies.
• Working for the U.S. Geological Survey offers a comprehensive benefits package that includes paid vacation, sick leave, and holidays; health, life, dental, vision, and long term care insurance, flexible spending accounts, and participation in the Federal Employees Retirement System.
  
  

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• Help Help A career with the U.S. government provides employees with a comprehensive benefits package. As a federal employee, you and your family will have access to a range of benefits that are designed to make your federal career very rewarding. Opens in a new windowLearn more about federal benefits.
  
  

Review our benefits

Eligibility for benefits depends on the type of position you hold and whether your position is full-time, part-time or intermittent. Contact the hiring agency for more information on the specific benefits offered.

How You Will Be Evaluated

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

Vacancy Related Questions: As part of the online application process, you will need to respond to a series of questions designed to assess your possession of the following competencies:

Collaboration

Compute / Analyze Data

Information Management

Interpersonal Communication

Basis Of Rating

Category rating will be used in the ranking and selection process for this position. The quality categories are Best-Qualified and Qualified. If you meet the basic qualification and eligibility requirements of this position, you will be contacted via email after the vacancy announcement closes and given 5 calendar days to submit narrative responses that address the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) required to perform the duties of this position. You will be rated and ranked based on the information you provide in your resume as well as the responses you submit to the required KSAs. Veterans' preference rules for category rating will be applied.

The Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities required for this position are as follows:

• Please describe your experience working with geochronological data, include specific methods and examples of how you have applied those methods and any geochronological database compilation efforts you have conducted. Please highlight any relevant software and programming languages you have utilized to work with geochronological data, where appropriate.
• Please describe your experience with management of large datasets, include details about the type of datasets, statistical analyses, or data visualizations you have applied. Please also describe specific examples of software (e.g., ArcGIS, QGIS, ENVI) or coding environments (e.g., R, Python, Matlab, SQL) that you have experience with, include details of where and when you developed this knowledge as well as your level of competence with each tool.
• This project requires that data be integrated across diverse geologic provinces and at different scales. Please describe your experience working with geologic data from different geologic provinces. Please highlight the specific projects you have worked on where you had to integrate different types of geologic data sets and data sets of different scales.
• You are tasked with compiling geochronological data with spatial locations. You have compiled several data sets with GPS coordinates (e.g., latitude and longitude) and one data set with locations displayed only on a PDF map. Describe the process you would use assess the uncertainty of these locations, how you might try to minimize the locational uncertainty, and how you would communicate the relative uncertainty to a user.
  
  

NOTE: If it is determined that you have rated yourself higher than is supported in your description of experience and/or education as described in your resume/application, or that your resume or application is incomplete, you may be rated ineligible, not qualified, or your score may be lowered.

To preview the announcement questionnaire, click here: https://apply.usastaffing.gov/ViewQuestionnaire/12455526