Health Physicist - Radiation Safety - Recruitment/Relocation Incentive

Health Physicist - Radiation Safety - Recruitment/Relocation Incentive

Department: Department of Veterans Affairs

Location(s): Temple, Texas

Salary Range: $61722 - $80243 Per Year

Job Summary: The incumbent is the alter ego to the CTVHCS Radiation Safety Officer (RSO), comprehensive radiation safety program manager. He/ she has delegated authority from the facility's Executive Director as a senior health physicist, the facility's ARSO of record (radioactive materials and machine producing radiation).

Major Duties:

• Major duties include, but are not limited to: Serves as assistant to the Radiation Safety Officer at Central Texas Veterans Health Care System, overseeing a comprehensive radiation safety program (ionizing and non-ionizing radiation sources, both radioactive materials and machine radiation producing devices) in support of hundreds of individuals using radioactive materials/ individuals exposed to radiation and/or individuals using radiation sources for medical and research under a single NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) Monitors operating programs to ensure strict compliance with NRC and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Conducts radiation audits and surveys to identify and mitigate potential hazards Performs personnel dosimetry oversight/monitoring for appropriate action. Performs maintenance, calibration, and quality assurance/quality checks on radiation detection instruments Independently manages the day-to-day operations of a health care system's Radioactive Waste Disposal Program. Manages the shipment of radioactive materials program for the health care system. Contracting Officer Representative oversight of contracts within the Radiation Safety section. Attends medical physics meetings as appropriate Conducts training as appropriate relating to radiation safety responsibilities. Serves as CTVHCS overseeing a comprehensive radiation safety program (ionizing and non-ionizing radiation sources, both radioactive materials and machine radiation producing devices) in support of hundreds of individuals using radioactive materials/ individuals exposed to radiation and/or individuals using radiation sources for medical and research under a single NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) license (Department of Veterans Affairs Master Materials License Number 03-23853-01VA). All health care systems are 1A complexity (VA Medical Centers), affiliated, secondary and tertiary care VA Health Care Systems. The incumbent in conjunction with the Radiation Safety Officer manages all aspects of a comprehensive Radiation Safety Program and assures that all Radiation Safety activities are being performed in accordance with procedures and regulatory requirements (under a single Nuclear Regulatory Commission license). The incumbent provides staff support for the Radiation Safety Program and independently manages multiple programs within multiple laboratory research, diagnostic and therapeutic settings. Independently manages the day-to-day operations of a health care system's Radioactive Waste Disposal Program. Manages the shipment of radioactive materials program for the health care system. The incumbent is responsible for compliance with the regulations governing the receipt, inspection, monitoring and recording of incoming shipments of radioactive materials. For example, each shipment must be surveyed or wipe-tested soon after arrival to ascertain whether leakage of the contained radioactive material has occurred in transit. As, s/he shall be one of the health care system's machine producing radiation subject matter expert with knowledge to perform professional, scientific, and technical work of marked difficulty and responsibility requiring extended professional, scientific, technical training and experience within the fields of health physics, medical physics and radiation safety which include novel and obscure radiation safety problems. Work Schedule: Monday - Friday; 8:00am - 4:30pm Virtual: This is not a virtual position. Position Description/PD#: Health Physicist - Radiation Safety - Recruitment/Relocation Incentive/PD011290 Relocation/Recruitment Incentives: 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, 05/01/2026. 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-09 position you must have served 52 weeks at the GS-07. 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. Individual Occupational Requirements: Degree: natural science or engineering that included at least 30 semester hours in health physics, engineering, radiological science, chemistry, physics, biology, mathematics, and/or calculus. OR; Combination of education and experience -- courses as shown in A above, plus appropriate experience or other education; or certification as a health physicist by the American Board of Health Physics, plus appropriate experience and other education that provided an understanding of sciences applicable to health physics comparable to that described in paragraph A. In addition to the statement above, you may qualify based on your experience and/or education as described below: Specialized Experience: You must have one year of specialized experience equivalent to at least the next lower grade GS-07 in the normal line of progression for the occupation in the organization. Examples of specialized experience would typically include, but are not limited to: Assists in radiation detection and measurement equipment to define ambient dose equivalent rates and contamination levels as it relates to the performance of Radioactive Material package swipe surveys, user facility inspections, sealed source leak tests, management of wastes from radionuclide therapy patients, radioactive material spill decontamination, and radiological decommissioning of radiation treatment rooms and user facilities; Assists in operation of computer, radiographic and scintillation counting equipment used to detect and monitor radiation; familiar with radiation standards of care for patients and potential occupational radiation exposure limits for staff. OR, Education: Applicants may substitute education for the required experience. To qualify based on education for this grade level you must have 2 years of progressively higher level graduate education leading to a master's degree or master's or equivalent graduate degree. (TRANSCRIPT REQUIRED) OR, Combination: Applicants may also combine education and experience to qualify at this level. You must have an combination of specialized experience and education beyond ???????2 years of progressively higher level graduate education leading to a master's degree or master's or equivalent graduate degree. (TRANSCRIPT REQUIRED). You will be rated on the following Competencies for this position: Health Physics Attention to Detail Health Risk Analysis 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 requires some physical exertion, such as long periods of walking and standing during audits of clinical programs such as nuclear medicine and standing while giving presentations to groups of people. Bending and squatting is necessary when surveying floors and surfaces in use areas to assess radioactive contamination by collecting wipe samples and scanning with radiation survey meters. Time is also spent in formal and informal meetings with many different groups. Much of the work is administrative in nature and requires sitting in an office and utilizing computers. In addition, periods of driving in traffic are required to visit outlying clinics and CBOCs. Lifting up to 50 pounds in weight is occasionally needed, such as when handing containers of radioactive waste. Work Environment: The incumbent will work much of the time in an adequately lighted and ventilated office environment; in a clinical environment, such as nuclear medicine, regularly; in research laboratories regularly; occasionally in an outdoor environment subject to low or high temperatures; in a storage room/warehouse environment occasionally; and at remote locations such as CBOCs. The incumbent will usually work during normal working hours but must occasionally work outside normal working hours (on call), particularly when incidents or accidents occur or when a patient is hospitalized because of treatment with radioactive material. The work environment will expose the incumbent to radioactive material and ionizing radiation and to chemical, biological, magnetic, laser, and sound hazards. Emergencies involving radioactive material or radiation will potentially expose the incumbent to higher levels of radioactive contamination or ionizing radiation. As a result, appropriate personal protective equipment and monitoring equipment will be required at times to include lead or lead equivalent radiation protective apparel, lead eyewear, powered air-purifying respirators, and fullbody anti-contamination suits. The work also involves other moderate risks or discomforts that require special safety precautions, e.g., working around moving carts, or machines, exposure to contagious diseases, lead and irritant chemicals. The incumbent may be required to occasionally move large storage containers, such as 55- gallon drums of radioactive waste. In some clinical environments (e.g., procedure rooms and operating rooms), the incumbent will be required to wear protective apparel such as surgical masks, gowns, caps, gloves, coveralls, and shoe covers to protect patients from risk of infection. 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 05/01/2026 to receive consideration. To preview the questionnaire click https://apply.usastaffing.gov/ViewQuestionnaire/12943919. 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: 2026-05-01