Summary The incumbent serves as an engineering research psychologist in the Human-Systems Integration Branch at the FAA William J. Hughes Technical Center. The incumbent conducts human factors research, engineering, development, testing, and evaluation activities in the aviation domain. The incumbent’s work supports the FAA efforts to improve the performance and effectiveness of air traffic controllers, pilots, and other aviation professionals. Responsibilities The incumbent serves as an engineering research psychologist in the Air Traffic Systems Test & Evaluation Services, Human-Systems Integration Branch at the FAA William J. Hughes Technical Center. The incumbent works in the Research Development and Human Factors Laboratory and conducts human factors research, engineering, development, testing, and evaluations. The incumbent’s work supports the FAA mission to provide the safest and most efficient aerospace system in the world by improving the performance and effectiveness of the human operators of aviation systems. These operators include air traffic controllers, air traffic managers, technical operations specialists, pilots, unmanned aircraft operators, dispatchers, aviation safety inspectors, and maintenance technicians. The incumbent applies detailed technical knowledge of psychological principles, practices, and techniques to solve complex human factors problems in the aviation domain. Typical assignments include: planning, preparing, and executing human-in-the-loop simulations; collecting, reducing, analyzing, and visualizing human factors data; conducting interviews, field observations, and focus groups with subject-matter experts; and conducting iterative rapid prototyping of user interfaces and conducting usability tests. • Conducts reviews of relevant scholarly and technical literature across multiple domains, including psychology, engineering, computer science, and graphic design. • Serves as a contributing author or co-author to research plans that outline the objectives, hypotheses, methods, metrics, and resources for projects. • Collects human factors data following established techniques and tools, including surveys and questionnaires, video and audio recordings, and physiological monitoring devices. • Conducts data analyses using established techniques and tools, including inferential statistics, data mining, and fast-time modeling. • Serves as contributing author or co-author for FAA technical reports and journal articles; presents briefings and papers at professional conferences. • Contributes relevant human factors information to requirements documents, system specifications, test procedures, standards, and guidelines. • Conducts all activities in compliance with ethical standards for the protection of human subjects. The incumbent performs assignments of low to moderate scope and complexity under the direction of a manager, team leader, or more experienced scientist or engineer. The incumbent acts as an individual contributor or a member of a multidisciplinary team. Existing policies and procedures provide guidance for most assignments. • Works closely with other psychologists, engineers, computer scientists, and subject-matter experts to accomplish assignments. • Coordinates with manager, team leader, or more experienced staff to plan time and use resources to accomplish assignments. • Frequently refers problems and work issues to manager, team leader, or more experienced staff when existing guidelines are not available or applicable. • Demonstrates some independence in planning time and using assigned resources to accomplish assignments and small projects. Provides regular status updates on activities to manager or team leader; Work is reviewed periodically during assignments and at completion to ensure timeliness and technical compliance with the requirements of the project or other work activity. • Contacts are mainly internal to the branch and project teams, and involve sharing information, providing data and analyses, and discussing the status of assignments. Contacts also include participants in human factors studies, surveys, simulations, or usability tests. Depending on the project, participants may be FAA employees, employees of external companies and organizations, or private citizens. Requirements Conditions of Employment We are not accepting applications from noncitizens. Qualifications To view the complete OPM qualification standard for the Group Coverage Qualification Standard for Psychology Series, 0180, please refer to: https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/classification-qualifications/general-schedule-qualification-standards/0100/psychology-series-0180/ To qualify for this position you must demonstrate in your application that you possess at least one year of specialized experience equivalent to FV-G, FG/GS 5/7/9. Specialized experience is experience that has equipped you with the particular knowledge, skills, and abilities to perform successfully the duties of the position. Experience includes: Experience applying human factors to system/product development or evaluation; experience planning or conducting field-site demonstrations or evaluations and experience with the identification and definition of user needs and requirements. OR 3 years of progressively higher level graduate education leading to a Ph.D. degree or Ph.D. or equivalent doctoral degree directly related. Qualification requirements must be met by the closing date of this vacancy announcement. The selecting official may decide to interview all, some or none of the candidates referred for consideration. You may also be considered for this vacancy based on eligibility under the 30% or More Disabled Veteran Program and/or Persons with Disabilities/Persons with Targeted Disabilities. To be considered for one of these special hiring authorities, you must identify your eligibility in your questionnaire in the Applicant-Preferred Conditions of Employment section. In addition, you must submit documentation that provides evidence of eligibility as indicated in the Required Documents section of the announcement. This is a career path progression position and has full promotion potential to the pay band -I without further competition. Identification of promotion in the vacancy announcement does not constitute a commitment or an obligation on the part of management to promote the employee selected at some future date. Promotion will depend upon the selectee meeting training, qualification requirements, and recommendation by the supervisor. Education This position has a positive education requirement: Applicants must submit a copy of their college or university transcripts(s) and certificates by the closing date of announcement to verify qualifications. If selected, an official transcript will be required prior to appointment. You may upload these documents with your application in USAJOBS or fax it to fax number provided in the announcement (please include announcement number on each page). Failure to do so will result in loss of consideration. Schools must be accredited by an accrediting institution recognized by the U.S. Department of Education. Accreditation may be verified at the following website: www.ed.gov/accreditation. Foreign education must be evaluated by a private professional organization specializing in interpretation of foreign education credentials or an accredited U.S. educational institution in terms of equivalence to a degree acquired at an American college or university. A copy of the evaluation results must be included, otherwise your foreign education will not be considered. Additional Information We may use this vacancy to fill other similar vacant positions. Position may be subject to a background investigation. A one-year probationary period may be required. The person selected for this position may be required to file a financial disclosure statement within 30 days of entry on duty. FAA policy limits certain outside employment and financial investments in aviation-related companies. www.faa.gov/jobs/workinghere/financial-disclosure-requirements The U.S. Department of Transportation strives to ensure that equity, transparency, accountability, collaboration, and communication permeate all that we do for the betterment of the Department, the traveling public, and our nation. As such, DOT values a highly diverse workforce of persons who promote a culture of belonging by respecting the personal dignity and worth of each individual and fostering a positive environment where all feel safe and welcome. If these commitments coincide with your personal ideals and professional aspirations, please consider joining the DOT family. Leave Enhancement: FAA organizations may offer enhanced annual leave accrual to newly appointed or reappointed employees. In order to receive consideration for such a benefit, applicants' prior non-Federal service or active duty uniformed service must directly relate to the duties of the position to which appointed. Granting enhanced annual leave is at the sole discretion of the hiring organization, and granting such benefit is not an entitlement nor guaranteed to any newly hired employee. As a part of the Federal-Wide Hiring Reform Initiative (streamlining the hiring process), the FAA is committed to eliminating the use of the Knowledge, Skills and Ability (KSA) narratives from the initial application in the hiring process for all announcements. Therefore, as an applicant for this announcement, you are NOT required to provide a narrative response in the text box listed below each KSA. In lieu of providing a KSA narrative response in the text box listed below each Knowledge, Skills and Abilities (KSA), in your work history, please include information that provides specific examples of how you meet the response level or answer you chose for each KSA. Your work history examples should be specific and clearly reflect the highest level of ability. Your KSA answers will be evaluated further to validate whether the level that you selected is appropriate based on the work history and experience you provided. Your answers may be adjusted by a Human Resource Specialist as appropriate. Eligible applicants meeting the minimum qualification requirements and selective factor(s), if applicable, may be further evaluated on the Knowledge, Skills and Abilities (KSA) listed in the announcement. Based on this evaluation, applicants will be placed in one of the following categories: score order, category grouping, or priority grouping and referred to the selecting official for consideration. This is a bargaining unit position. This position is represented by NFFE 1340: Tech Center Professionals. Links to Important Information: Locality Pay , COLA