About this role
Job Summary
This position is located within the United States Department (USDA), National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), Office of Survey Design and Methodology, Survey Design Branch in Olivette, MO. In this position, you will be an integral member of the Survey Design Branch responsible for planning, administering, and executing survey design activities that support large agricultural surveys.
USDA employees: Please refer to the Next Steps section.
Qualifications
Applicants must meet all qualifications and eligibility requirements by the closing date of the announcement including time-in-grade restrictions, specialized experience and/or education, as defined below. Time in Grade: Current federal employees applying for a promotion opportunity must meet the time in grade requirement of 52 weeks of service at the next lower grade level in the normal line of progression for the position being filled. Basic Education Requirement: Degree that included 15 semester hours in statistics (or in mathematics and statistics, provided at least 6 semester hours were in statistics), and 9 additional semester hours in one or more of the following: physical or biological sciences, medicine, education, or engineering; or in the social sciences including demography, history, economics, social welfare, geography, international relations, social or cultural anthropology, health sociology, political science, public administration, psychology, etc.
Credit toward meeting statistical course requirements should be given for courses in which 50 percent of the course content appears to be statistical methods, e.g., courses that included studies in research methods in psychology or economics such as tests and measurements or business cycles, or courses in methods of processing mass statistical data such as tabulating methods or electronic data processing. OR Combination of education and experience that included the courses shown above, plus appropriate experience or additional education. The experience should have included a full range of professional statistical work such as
- (a) sampling,
- (b) collecting, computing, and analyzing statistical data, and
- (c) applying statistical techniques such as measurement of central tendency, dispersion, skewness, sampling error, simple and multiple correlation, analysis of variance, and tests of significance.
AND Specialized Experience Requirement: Specialized experience is experience directly related to the position to be filled. The specialized experience requirements for this position are: Qualifying experience for GS-15 includes one year of specialized experience comparable to GS-14 which is directly related to the work of this position and which has equipped the applicant with the knowledge, skills, and abilities to perform successfully the duties of the position. For this position, specialized experience is managing the development and testing of new procedures for a data collection center, group or section; overseeing design or development of data collection instruments and supporting materials; providing policy guidance to decision-makers relating to survey designs for an agricultural statistical program; and identifying, developing, or implementing objectives for statistical training programs.
Applicants must submit transcript(s) at the time of application for verification of meeting the education requirement described above. 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 and can provide valuable training and experience that translates directly to paid employment. You will receive credit for all qualifying experience, including volunteer experience.
Major Duties
- Provide executive leadership for the Survey Design Branch, setting priorities and ensuring alignment with NASS objectives.
- Manage the External Project Agreement process, including stakeholder consultation, development of business cases, cost estimation and agreement execution.
- Direct designated agricultural statistical programs and cooperative agreements with state agencies, universities, and private organizations, ensuring integration of federal, state, and private requirements.
- Oversee design and development of data collection instruments and supporting materials.
- Direct development and maintenance of area and list sampling frames for the Census of Agriculture and other agricultural surveys.
- Supervise design of list and area frame samples for census and survey projects.
- Develop and recommend policies addressing use and continued enhancement of frame operations.
- Provide technical and administrative supervision for multiple section chiefs and their staff responsible for survey design operations.
Requirements
You must be a US Citizen or US National. Males born after 12/31/1959 must be Selective Service registered or exempt. Subject to satisfactory adjudication of background investigation and/or fingerprint check. Direct Deposit - Per Public Law 104-134 all Federal employees are required to have federal payments made by direct deposit to their financial institution. Successfully pass the E-Verify employment verification check. To learn more about E-Verify, including your rights and responsibilities, visit https://www.e-verify.gov/. The U.S. Government utilizes Trusted Workforce 2.0 to implement Continuous Vetting (CV) as a-whole-of government approach to personnel security.
If selected for this position, you will be subject to continuous automated record checks of criminal, financial, and public record databases throughout your period of eligibility or employment, replacing traditional periodic reinvestigations. Subject to one year supervisory/managerial probationary period unless prior service is creditable. New USDA supervisors must successfully complete all components of the required training program before the end of their probationary period. Financial Disclosure is required.