Department: Department of Veterans Affairs
Location(s): Cleveland, Ohio
Salary Range: $93461 - $144481 Per Year
Job Summary: The Administrative Officer for Research and Development (AO/R&D) position is located at the Cleveland VAMC. The purpose of the position is to collaborate with the Associate Chief of Staff for R&D (ACOS/R&D) as a first-level supervisor responsible for planning, developing, and directing administrative and programmatic activities of a large and complex R&D Program.
Major Duties:
Qualifications: To qualify for this position, applicants must meet all requirements by the closing date of this announcement, 03/10/2026. Time-In-Grade Requirement: Applicants who are current Federal employees and have held a GS grade any time in the past 52 weeks must also meet time-in-grade requirements by the closing date of this announcement. For a GS-12 position you must have served 52 weeks at the GS-11. For a GS-13 position you must have served 52 weeks at the GS-12. The grade may have been in any occupation, but must have been held in the Federal service. An SF-50 that shows your time-in-grade eligibility must be submitted with your application materials. If the most recent SF-50 has an effective date within the past year, it may not clearly demonstrate you possess one-year time-in-grade, as required by the announcement. In this instance, you must provide an additional SF-50 that clearly demonstrates one-year time-in-grade. Note: Time-In-Grade requirements also apply to former Federal employees applying for reinstatement as well as current employees applying for Veterans Employment Opportunities Act of 1998 (VEOA) appointment. You may qualify based on your experience as described below: GS-12 Specialized Experience: You must possess at least one (1) full year of specialized experience, which equips you with the particular knowledge, skills, and abilities to perform successfully the duties of the Administrative Officer, GS-12 position, and that is typically in or related to the work of the position to be filled. To be creditable, this specialized experience must have been equivalent to the GS-11 level in Federal service to qualify at the GS-12. In order to meet the minimum qualifications for this position, you must meet 3/5 of the following examples of specialized experience. Examples of specialized experience include: 1) Provides program oversight for large, multi-functional organization with complex administrative, HR and managerial activities. 2) Manages the HR-related activities for office operations. 3) Supervises personnel, completes official performance appraisals, and recommends personnel for promotion, retention, separation, awards and/or disciplinary action. 4) Performs support activities such as accessing, updating, researching and retrieving information from a wide variety of databases. 5) Exercises responsibility for budget formulation, presentation, and execution. GS-13 Specialized Experience: You must possess at least one (1) full year of specialized experience, which equips you with the particular knowledge, skills, and abilities to perform successfully the duties of the Administrative Officer, GS-13 position, and that is typically in or related to the work of the position to be filled. To be creditable, this specialized experience must have been equivalent to the GS-12 level in Federal service to qualify at the GS-13. In order to meet the minimum qualifications for this position, you must meet 4/7 of the following examples of specialized experience. Examples of specialized experience include: 1) Provides program oversight for large, multi-functional organization with complex administrative, HR and managerial activities. 2) Manages the HR-related activities for office operations. 3) Supervises personnel, completes official performance appraisals, and recommends personnel for promotion, retention, separation, awards and/or disciplinary action. 4) Performs support activities such as accessing, updating, researching and retrieving information from a wide variety of databases. 5) Exercises responsibility for budget formulation, presentation, and execution. 6) Provides expert guidance to prospective, new, and established investigators on all matters covering research implementation, management, and regulatory review requirements. 7) Reviews, analyzes, and initiates implementation of all policies and regulations that affect and/or govern research funding operations. Note: Evidence of specialized experience must be supported by detailed documentation of duties performed in positions held on your resume. You must provide work experience information such as hours per week, salary, and starting/ending dates of employment (month and year format) and grade levels for all Federal positions to establish you have one (1) full year of Specialized Experience at or comparable to the required grade level. You will be rated on the following Competencies for this position: Administration and Management Financial Management Human Resources Management Leadership 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; religions; 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. Note: A full year of work is considered to be 35-40 hours of work per week. Part-time experience will be credited on the basis of time actually spent in appropriate activities. Applicants wishing to receive credit for such experience must indicate clearly the nature of their duties and responsibilities in each position and the number of hours a week spent in such employment. Physical Requirements: The work is sedentary. It occasionally requires carrying light objects such as files, books and papers; some walking, standing and bending. No special physical qualifications are required. For more information on these qualification standards, please visit the United States Office of Personnel Management's website at https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/classification-qualifications/general-schedule-qualification-standards/.
How to Apply: All applicants are encouraged to apply online. To apply for this position, you must complete the questionnaire and submit the documentation specified in the Required Documents section below. The complete application package must be submitted by 11:59 PM (ET) on 03/10/2026 to receive consideration. To preview the questionnaire click https://apply.usastaffing.gov/ViewQuestionnaire/12895021. To begin, click Apply Online to create a USA JOBS account or log in to your existing account. Follow the prompts to select your USA JOBS resume and/or other supporting documents and complete the occupational questionnaire. Click Submit My Answers to submit your application package. NOTE: It is your responsibility to ensure your responses and appropriate documentation is submitted prior to the closing date. Beginning September 27, 2025, Federal agencies will only accept resumes up to two pages in length to comply with the Merit Hiring Plan. Resumes longer than two pages will result in ineligibility for further consideration for the position. USAJOBS will not allow you to upload or build resumes longer than two pages, and you will need to update the resumes in your profile before applying for a job. Resumes should include information relevant to the knowledge, skills, abilities, and competencies of the position to which you are applying. VA is unable to make assumptions about qualifications if not clearly listed. Resumes must be legible so they can be reviewed for eligibility, minimum qualifications and other position requirements listed in the job announcement. Your resume must be 5MB or less. We recommend saving and uploading your resume as a PDF to maintain formatting and number of pages. We also accept GIF, JPG, JPEG, PNG, RTF, TXT, PDF, ODT or Word (DOC or DOCX). We do not accept PDF portfolio files. We recommend using a sans-serif font size like Lato, if available. Other widely available options are Calibri, Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, Open San Source Sans Pro, Roboto or Noro Sans. Make your page margins 0.5 inches. Consider using 14-point size font for titles and 10-point for the main text in your resume. The resume builder can help you create a resume using these recommendations and uses the information in your USAJOBS profile to help you get started. Helpful Hints for Creating a Two-Page Resume: Prioritize most relevant and recent experience Use concise, results focused language Align language from the job announcement Focus on demonstrating skills and competencies Remove outdated or unrelated experience Use the USAJOBS resume builder Additional guidance on this new requirement and resume building tools can be found at: https://help.usajobs.gov/faq/application/documents/resume/page-limit https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/hiring-information/merit-hiring-plan-resources/applicant-guidance-on-the-two-page-resume-limit/ Career Transition Assistance Plan (CTAP) provide eligible displaced Federal/VA competitive service employees with selection priority over other candidates for competitive service vacancies. To be qualified you must submit appropriate documentation (a copy of the agency notice, your most recent performance rating, and your most recent SF-50 noting current position, grade level, and duty location) and be found well-qualified for this vacancy. To be well-qualified: applicants must possess experience that exceeds the minimum qualifications of the position including all selective factors, and who are proficient in most of the required competencies of the job. Information about ICTAP and CTAP eligibility is on OPM's Career Transition Resources website at http://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/workforce-restructuring/employee-guide-to-career-transition/. During the application process you may have an option to opt-in to make your resume available to hiring managers in the agency who have similar positions. Opting in does not impact your application for this announcement, nor does it guarantee further consideration for additional positions.
Application Deadline: 2026-03-10