You are viewing a preview of this job. Log in or register to view more details about this job.

Electronics Engineer (MAP)

This position is located within the Telecommunications and Information Technology Planning Division at the Institute for Telecommunication Sciences, located at the U.S. Department of Commerce Laboratories in Boulder, Colorado.

This position will be filled under the DOC Alternative Personnel System (CAPS). This system replaced the Federal GS pay plan and structure. Under CAPS, positions are classified by career, pay plan, and pay band. The ZP-III is equivalent to the GS-11/12.




Responsibilities

Duties for this position:

• Study and assess the performance of telecommunication system technologies, using digital signal processing.
• Develop digital signal processing algorithms that facilitate informed decisions on future telecommunication systems.
• Perform multimedia user experience (UX) evaluation, quality of experience (QoE) testing, processing of audio & video (e.g., recording, editing, coding), and simulating networks.
• Develop complex computer programs and perform complex data analyses in several programming languages, by coding innovative algorithms, and analyzing telecommunication system requirements to establish functional
requirements.
• Write, debug, and troubleshoot software in MATLAB®.
• Software development tasks involving a wide range of programming skills such as web programming, algorithm optimization, and user interface design.
• Technical report writing, delivering oral presentations, and contributing to international standards.
• Collaborating with industry, academia, or international experts in such forums as the Video Quality Experts Group (VQEG).




Travel Required

Not required




Requirements

Conditions of Employment

  • Must be a U.S. citizen.
  • Must be suitable for Federal employment.
  • Must be registered for Selective Service, if applicable (www.sss.gov)
  • May be required to successfully complete a probationary period.

Only degrees from an accredited college or university recognized by the Department of Education are acceptable to meet positive education requirements or to substitute education for experience. For additional information, U.S. Department of Education website at - https://ope.ed.gov/accreditation/ or to see if your college or university is accredited, go to the ABET accredited institution website at - http://www.abet.org. 

 You are not required to submit official documents at this time; copies are sufficient.
Any selections made under this notice will be processed as new appointments to the civil service. Current Federal employees would, therefore, be given new appointments to the civil service. However, this only affects tenure and requires a probationary period of one year to be served, other civil service attributes are not affected.




Qualifications

To qualify for the ZP-III (GS-11):
Specialized experience: In addition to meeting the Basic Requirements, applicants must also possess one year of specialized experience equivalent to the ZP-II (GS-09) 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. For this position, specialized experience is experience with:
  • Modem programming concepts (algorithms, data structures, software engineering, and user interface design).
  • Developing and testing MATLAB or C-programming language software
  •  Big data and statistics 
  • Signal processing (e.g., image, video, audio, and/or speech processing) using time-frequency analysis, filter design, video coding, image coding, speech coding, audio coding, signal analysis, signal enhancement, signal restoration, source separation, speech recognition, audio event detection, and music information retrieval.
  • Interdisciplinary knowledge of research topics including: human-centered computing (e.g., cognitive science, crowdsourcing, human-centered activities in multimedia, human-computer interaction, human factors, psychology, or social computing); communications engineering; telecommunications engineering; electrical engineering; project organization (e.g., critical thinking, how to organize ideas into an engineering process); subjective video quality testing; speech quality testing; and intelligibility testing.

OR

Education: PhD or equivalent doctoral degree, or 3 full years of progressively higher level graduate education leading to such a degree if related.

OR

A combination of education and experience. NOTE: Only graduate education in excess of two years is qualifying for combination.

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.




Education

To qualify for the 0855 series:

BASIC REQUIREMENTS: This position requires applicants to meet a Basic Education Requirement in addition to at least one year of specialized experience, OR substitution of education for experience, OR a combination of education and experience (if applicable) in order to be found minimally qualified. You MUST meet one of the following basic education requirements:

A. Degree: Professional 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 -- 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.
  2. Written Test -- Evidence of having successfully passed the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) 2 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. Applicants who have passed the EIT examination and have completed all the requirements for either (a) a bachelor's degree in engineering technology (BET) from an accredited college of university that included 60 semester hours of courses in the physical, mathematical, and engineering sciences, or (b) a BET from a program accredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) may be rated eligible for certain engineering positions at GS-5. Eligibility is limited to positions that are within or closely related to the specialty field of the engineering technology program. Applicants for positions that involve highly technical research, development, or similar functions requiring an advanced level of competence in basic science must meet the basic requirements in paragraph A.
  4. Because of the diversity in kind and quality of BET programs, graduates of other BET programs are required to complete at least 1 year of additional education or highly technical work experience of such nature as to provide reasonable assurance of the possession of the knowledge, skills, and abilities required for professional engineering competence. The adequacy of this background must be demonstrated by passing the EIT examination.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.)