Department: Department of Veterans Affairs
Location(s): Chillicothe, Ohio
Salary Range: $77926 - $101309 Per Year
Job Summary: Incumbent works under the general supervision of the Associate Director at the Chillicothe VA Medical Center and is responsible for the overall management and supervision of the fire protection, rescue, hazardous materials response, inspection, emergency medical Advanced and Basic Life Support (A/BLS), Pre-Hospital Care, and fire prevention services and programs for the Chillicothe VAMC and associated CBOCs. Relocation/Recruitment Incentive may be authorized for highly qualified candidates.
Major Duties:
Qualifications: To qualify for this position, applicants must meet all requirements by the closing date of this announcement, 01/22/2026. 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-11 position you must have served 52 weeks at the GS-09. 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: Specialized Experience: You must have one year of specialized experience equivalent to at least the next lower grade GS-09 in the normal line of progression for the occupation in the organization. Examples of specialized experience would typically include, but are not limited to: (1) inspecting, controlling or extinguishing fires as a member of an organized military, industrial, volunteer, or governmental fire departmentor brigade; (2) rescue operations; (3) detection, reduction, or elimination of potential fire hazards; (4) operation of fire communications equipment; (5) controlling hazardous materials incidents and/or (6) developing, implementing, or providing training in fire protection and prevention. You will be rated on the following Competencies for this position: Administration and Management Planning and Evaluating Technical Competence Financial Management Leadership Managing Human Resources Certification: VA fire department staffing at VA medical facilities that provide off-campus ambulance transport by the fire department, must include personnel trained to the level of Emergency Medical Technician Basic (EMT-B) or Emergency Medical Technician Paramedic (EMT-P). You must have attended and successfully completed a State of Ohio or Nationally registered certification class for Emergency Medical Technician Basic (EMT-B) or Emergency Medical Technician Paramedic (EMT-P) and must maintain such certification to meet requirements of this position at this level. A copy of certification must be submitted with application package. Certification: To be eligible for employment as a VA Fire Chief, each applicant must have certification as Fire Officer IV in accordance with NFPA 1021, certification as Fire Inspector II in accordance with NFPA 1031 and certification as Hazardous Materials Incident Commander in accordance with NFPA 472. A copy of certification must be submitted with application package. Proof of Certification includes: Nationally (International Fire Service Accreditation Congress (IFSAC) or National Professional Qualifications Board (ProBoard)) Fire Fighter I & II in accordance with NFPA 1001, Driver Operator Pumper in accordance with NFPA 1002, Fire Officer I, II, III & IV in accordance with NFPA 1021, Fire Inspector II in accordance with NFPA 1031 and Hazardous Materials Operator and Hazardous Materials Incident Commander in accordance with NFPA 472 and NIMS ICS-100, 200,300,400, 700 and 800. Preferred Experience: Experience managing fire protection and prevention programs, overseeing disciplinary actions and performance evaluations and managing a fire department training program. 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: Work requires the ability to perform strenuous physical activity for a long period of time, in an emergency situation. Activities involve prolonged periods of time standing, walking, bending, crouching, and carrying heavy firefighting tools and related equipment associated with the performance of such duties as maintenance, testing, inspections, drills, suppression, and transport of persons. Work Environment: The work environment is varied. Work is performed indoors and outdoors, in areas where it is dirty, dusty, noisy, or greasy, outside hot and cold inclement / dangerous weather, and occasionally in areas where there is danger of exposure to asbestos dust from insulation. Work involves exposure to fires, noxious gases from burning materials, handling of frightened persons, and other physically injurious hazards. Firefighting hazards are recurring and require the use of specialized firefighting safety equipment, clothing, and procedures. The Firefighter/EMT can be exposed to airborne/blood borne pathogens, blood, vomit, and other infectious diseases transmitted from a patient, staff member or visitor to the VAMC. 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 01/22/2026 to receive consideration. To preview the questionnaire click https://apply.usastaffing.gov/ViewQuestionnaire/12869032. 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/ Special Employment Consideration: VA encourages persons with disabilities to apply, including those eligible for hiring under 5 CFR 213.3102(u), Schedule A, Appointment of persons with disabilities [i.e., intellectual disabilities, severe physical disabilities, or psychiatric disabilities], and/or Disabled veterans with a compensable service-connected disability of 30% or more. Contact the Agency Contact for information on how to apply under this appointment authority via the Selective Placement Coordinator. 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: 2026-01-22