Department of Veterans Affairs

Congressional Liaison Officer

Murfreesboro, Tennessee Full time

Congressional Liaison Officer

Department: Department of Veterans Affairs

Location(s): Murfreesboro, Tennessee

Salary Range: $74678 - $97087 Per Year

Job Summary: This position is located within the Office of the Assistant Medical Center Director, under the Veterans Experience Officer at the Tennessee Valley Healthcare System. The purpose of the position is to provide timely communication to all inquiries from Congressional offices and all other higher-level authorities, including VACO, VISN, Secretary, White House, and OIG.

Major Duties:

  • The incumbent must have knowledge of Congressional, VA, and VHA organizations, including the various administrative support functions and clinical areas that support and/or impact the overall experience of care for Veterans. The incumbent must also possess knowledge of Veteran-Centric Complaint Resolution principles and VA/VHA appeal processes. The core duties of this position include but are not limited to the following: Safeguard confidential/sensitive information and apply policy, regulation, and law appropriately when preparing documents and decisions. Prepare, review, edit, and oversee clinically complex and politically sensitive correspondence to ensure accuracy, tone, and compliance. Ensure responses comply with executive preferences, VA practices/policies, and requirements for medically sensitive information (privacy, confidentiality). Maintain executive suspense tracking for all correspondence and action items; update electronic systems; monitor deadlines and escalate as needed. Independently research issues; gather pertinent data from staff/files; synthesize findings to draft responses within tight timeframes. Support service lines with Patient Advocate improvement projects; provide consultation and process guidance. Triage administrative/clinical problems raised by Veterans/families/staff; notify appropriate officials; prepare or ensure timely responses. Meet with VSOs; communicate with Veterans, families, internal/external stakeholders to gather/share essential information. Provide interim verbal and email updates to stakeholders (Congressional offices, VHA/VISN leadership, senior management, clinical staff, Veterans/families) until final letters are complete. Perform Patient Advocacy duties; engage in customer service and service recovery for Veterans, families, stakeholders. Maintain open communication channels to enhance Veteran experience; model professionalism and patient-centered care. Serve as primary point of contact for all Congressional inquiries and formal/informal executive-level inquiries regarding Veteran patients; triage, assign, and track through resolution. Formulate policy recommendations; prepare issue briefs, memoranda, executive summaries for facility leadership, VISN, and VACO on sensitive/complex inquiries. Work Schedule: Monday - Friday | 8:00 AM - 4:30 PM CST Telework: This position may be authorized for telework. Telework eligibility will be discussed during the interview process. Virtual: This is not a virtual position. Position Description/PD#: Congressional Liaison Officer/PD709920 Relocation/Recruitment Incentives: Not Authorized Critical Skills Incentive (CSI): Not Approved Permanent Change of Station (PCS): Not Authorized

Qualifications: To qualify for this position, applicants must meet all requirements by the closing date of this announcement, 05/04/2026. 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-9 position you must have served 52 weeks at the GS-7. 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. Examples of appropriate SF-50s include: Within grade increases at the highest grade held; or Promotions with an effective date more than one year old; or SF-50s at the highest grade held with an effective date more than one year old. In addition to the Time-in-Grade Requirements, you must also meet specialized experience. You may qualify based on your experience and/or education as described below: SPECIALIZED EXPERIENCE: You must have at least one (1) full year of specialized experience equivalent to at least the next lower grade level (GS-9) in the Federal Service, that is directly related to the work of the position and has equipped you with the particular knowledge, skills and abilities to successfully perform the duties as a Health System Specialist. Qualifying specialized experience is defined as: Preparing, reviewing, editing, and overseeing clinically complex and politically sensitive correspondence ensuring accuracy, clarity, tone alignment, and adherence to policy. Maintaining suspense tracking for all correspondence and action items; updating electronic systems; monitoring deadlines and escalating as needed. Researching issues; gathering pertinent data from staff/files; synthesizing findings to draft responses within tight timeframes. Formulating policy recommendations; preparing issue briefs, memoranda, and summaries for facility leadership, VISN, and VACO on sensitive/complex inquiries. Interpreting VA policy, directives, regulations, and law related to Veteran healthcare, privacy, correspondence handling, and congressional processes. NOTE: Experience must be fully documented on your resume and must include job title, duties, month and year start/end dates, AND hours worked per week OR EDUCATION: Successfully completed a Ph.D. or equivalent doctoral degree or 3 full years of progressively higher level graduate education leading to such a degree or LL.M., if related. The education portion must include courses that demonstrate the knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to do the work of this position. Education must have been obtained in an accredited college, or university. NOTE: Transcripts must be submitted with your application materials. Education cannot be credited without documentation. OR COMBINATION: Combinations of successfully completed graduate level education (beyond the first 2 years) and specialized experience as described above to meet total experience requirements. The education portion must include graduate courses that demonstrate the knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to do to the work of this position. You will be rated on the following Competencies for this position: Attention to Detail Customer Service Decision Making Flexibility Integrity/Honesty Interpersonal Skills Learning Reading Comprehension Reasoning Self-Management Stress Tolerance Teamwork 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 primarily sedentary but also demands some standing, walking, bending, lifting, and carrying charts, clinical folders, forms, and miscellaneous supplies to various locations within the medical center. The incumbent frequently walks to various parts of the medical center including patient care areas. 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 05/04/2026 to receive consideration. To preview the questionnaire click https://apply.usastaffing.gov/ViewQuestionnaire/12948473. 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/ The Interagency Career Transition Assistance Plan (ICTAP) and 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: 2026-05-04