Department: Department of Veterans Affairs
Location(s): Golden, Colorado, Washington, District of Columbia, Hines, Illinois, Frederick, Maryland, Eatontown, New Jersey, Fredericksburg, Virginia
Salary Range: $89508 - $116362 Per Year
Job Summary: This position is assigned within one of the service organizations of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) National Acquisition Center, which is strategically aligned under the Office of Procurement, Acquisition & Logistics located in VA Central Office, Washington, D.C. The Contract Specialist is responsible for the solicitation, analysis, negotiation, award and administration of a group of contracts and performs a full range of contract administration duties related to complex contracts.
Major Duties:
Qualifications: To qualify for this position, applicants must meet all requirements by the closing date of this announcement, 04/01/2026. 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 level. 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. See the Required Document section below for more information regarding the SF-50s needed to verify time-in-grade. You may qualify based on your experience and/or education as described below: Individual Occupational Requirements: A 4-year course of study leading to a bachelor's degree with a major in any field; OR At least 24 semester hours in any combination of the following fields: accounting, business, finance, law, contracts, purchasing, economics, industrial management, marketing, quantitative methods, or organization and management. In addition to the Individual Occupational Requirements listed above, applicants must meet the specialized experience as described below: Specialized Experience: You must have one year of specialized experience equivalent to at least the next lower grade (GS-11) in the normal line of progression for the occupation in the organization. Examples of specialized experience would typically include, but are not limited to: Participating in acquisition planning, pre-award responsibilities and contract awards for major contracting elements; Serving as the contracting officer, contract negotiator, and contract administrator for high dollar value, contracts with a national scope; Making final determinations relative to price adjustment, deviations from contract terms and conditions, delivery schedules and changes, supplemental agreements, change orders, disclosures, and other related contract matters upon analysis; Resolving disagreements between auditors and contractors involving audit findings; Preparing proposals, conducting evaluations, and resolving contractual issues; Resolving complex procurement problems and providing expert advice on contractual matters. You will be rated on the following Competencies for this position: Accountability Attention to Detail Compliance Contract Administration Critical Thinking Customer Service Decision Making Flexibility Influencing/Negotiating Integrity/Honesty Interpersonal Skills Learning Reading Comprehension Reasoning Self-Management Stress Tolerance Teamwork Writing 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 in nature. For more information on these qualification standards, please visit the United States Office of Personnel Management's website at http://://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/classification-qualifications/general-schedule-qualification-standards/. 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 found well qualified, applicants' specialized experience must demonstrate the following:: Collaborating effectively across departments, external agencies, and with contractors to generate innovative ideas and streamline processes Drives continuous improvement initiatives, identifying opportunities for efficiency and innovation across organizational boundaries and long-standing policies and procedures Demonstrates exceptional problem-solving skills with minimal supervision, consistently proposing creative and non-traditional solutions Negotiating tough agreements successfully, leveraging strategic thinking and persuasive communication Conducting award and post-award negotiations, such as supplemental agreements or settlement actions, and to ensure compliance with all relevant guidelines and regulations Preparing contractual documents for higher-level review Conducting meetings, negotiations, and providing guidance to management officials, contract administrators, and subordinate contract specialists Resolving complex procurement problems and providing expert advice on contractual matters 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/. Local Commuting Area: The local commuting area for this position is defined as a radius of 50 miles from the locations listed for this vacancy. This includes all locations that fall within a 50-mile driving distance from the Department of Veterans Affairs, National Acquisition Center offices at those locations.
How to Apply: Please read the entire announcement and all the instructions before you begin an application. To apply and be considered for this position, you must complete all required questionnaires, assessments and submit all required documentation as specified in the How to Apply and Required Documents section. The complete application package must be submitted by 11:59 PM (ET) on the closing date of the announcement to receive consideration. The application process is as follows: Click the Apply Online button. Answer the questions presented in the application and attach all necessary supporting documentation. Click the Submit Application button prior to 11:59 PM (ET) on the announcement closing date. If you are required to complete any USA Hire Assessments, you will be notified after submitting your application. The notification will be provided in your application submission screen and via email. The notification will include your unique assessment access link to the USA Hire system and the completion deadline. Additionally, in USAJOBS you can click "Track this application" to return to your assessment completion notice. Access USA Hire using your unique assessment link. Access is granted through your USAJOBS login credentials. Review all instructions prior to beginning your assessments. You will have the opportunity to request a testing accommodation before beginning the assessments should you have a disability covered under the Rehabilitation Act of1973 as amended. Set aside at least 3 hours to take the USA Hire Assessments; however, most applicants complete the assessments in less time. If you need to stop the assessments and continue later, you can re-use your unique assessment link. Your responses to the USA Hire Assessments will be reused for one year (in most cases) from the date you complete an assessment. If future applications you submit require completion of the same assessments, your responses will be automatically reused. NOTE: It is your responsibility to ensure your responses and appropriate documentation is submitted prior to the closing date. Visit the USA Hire Applicant Resource Center for practice assessments and assessment preparation resources at: https://support-usahire.opm.gov/hc/en-us 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/ To update your application, including supporting documentation: During the announcement open period, return to your USAJOBS account, find your application record, and click Edit my application. This option will no longer be available once the announcement has closed. To view the announcement status or your application status: Click on this: https://www.usajobs.gov/Help/how-to/application/status/. Your application status page is where you can view your application status, USA Hire assessment completion status (if applicable), and review your notifications sent by the hiring agency regarding your application.
Application Deadline: 2026-04-01