Department of Veterans Affairs

Program Specialist

Columbia, Missouri Full time

Program Specialist

Department: Department of Veterans Affairs

Location(s): Columbia, Missouri

Salary Range: $61722 - $97087 Per Year

Job Summary: OUR MISSION: To fulfill President Lincoln's promise "To care for those who have served in our nation's military and for their families, caregivers, and survivors" - by serving and honoring the men and women who are America's Veterans. How would you like to become a part of a team providing compassionate whole health care to Veterans?

Major Duties:

  • The Program Specialist reports directly to the Chief, Office of Community Care (OCC) who reports to the Deputy Chief of staff at the Harry S. Truman Memorial Veterans' Hospital. The OCC Service consists of 66.0 FTEE including nurses, advanced medical support assistants, medical support assistants and a customer service specialist. The purpose of this position is to provide administrative support to the OCC program, directing and coordinating the administrative, operational, and planning activities within the service. The Program Specialist position is responsible for the administrative management of the Service with final authority resting with the Chief. Incumbent serves as the focal point and resource person responsible for the development, implementation, evaluation, interpretation, revision, and necessary corrective action of all applicable administrative policies, functions, activities, operations, and programs for OCC. The primary functions of this position involve providing administrative support to the Chief of OCC as warranted, participating with the Chief in strategic planning; creating and maintaining statistical data for decision-making purpose; developing and monitoring cost effective programs; developing administrative/business/clinical processes, methods, and tools to systematicallyevaluate program activities and effectiveness.Duties include, but are not limited to: Coordinate's activities, performs analytical trending and evaluative work associated with OCC such as consults, authorizations, payments, scheduling, VSSC, Community Care contracts. Reviews outgoing correspondence under the supervision of the Chief for determination of accuracy of information, proper composition, proper format, and whether such correspondence conforms to current VA polices, instructions and regulations, as well as the viewpoint of the Chief. Develops both long and short-range policies and plans for the organization by coordinating the medical administration needs of the organization(s) for which accountable. Develops the need for and maintains an awareness of available resources, and makes recommendations regarding needs, distribution, or redistribution of these resources. Gathers and analyzes budget needs of the Medical Center in relation to the Service Line and performs all phases of budgeting within administrative requirements. Develops monthly and quarterly cost ceilings while maintaining running control of funds to ensure that accounts are within authorized levels. Discusses, investigates, and responds to associated employee grievances and dissatisfactions in order to resolve conflicts. Assists managers and staff in projecting staffing needs, writing position descriptions/functional statements, developing job analyses, preparing performance plans and appraisals, drafting disciplinary and adverse actions. Promotion Potential: The selectee may be promoted to the full performance level without further competition when all regulatory, qualification, and performance requirements are met. Selection at a lower grade level does not guarantee promotion to the full performance level. Work Schedule: 7:30am-4:00pm, Monday-Friday Telework: This position may be authorized for telework. Virtual: This is not a virtual position. Position Description/PD#: Program Specialist/PD090930 Relocation/Recruitment Incentives: Not Authorized Critical Skills Incentive (CSI): Not Approved Permanent Change of Station (PCS): Not Authorized Financial Disclosure: Not Required

Qualifications: To qualify for this position, applicants must meet all requirements by the closing date of this announcement, 04/30/2026. 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. For a GS-11 position you must have served 52 weeks at the GS-9.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 and/or education as described below: GS-9 Specialized Experience: You must have one year of specialized experience equivalent to at least the next lower grade GS-7 in the normal line of progression for the occupation in the organization. Examples of specialized experience would typically include, but are not limited to: Participates with section supervisors in reviewing office needs, plans, and goals to develop budget data and justification for review and approval, communicate verbally and in writing with a variety of people from different backgrounds and different levels of understanding; to include clerical, technical, administrative, and professional (medical and non-medical) people at all levels in the agency, to explain, obtain, and adhere to the objective of patient care, responsible for developing and maintaining computerized information and for providing outputs and interpretation to appropriate staff. OR, Education: Applicants may substitute education for the required experience. To qualify based on education for this grade level you must have: GS-9: Master's or equivalent graduate degree, or 2 full years of progressively higher level graduate education leading to such a degree, or LL.B or J.D, if related. Combination: Applicants may also combine education and experience to qualify at this level. You must have an combination of specialized experience and education beyond bachelors degree. GS-11: Specialized Experience: You must have one year of specialized experience equivalent to at least the next lower grade GS-7 in the normal line of progression for the occupation in the organization. Examples of specialized experience would typically include, but are not limited to: Discusses, investigates, and responds to associated employee grievances and dissatisfactions in order to resolve conflicts, assists managers and staff in projecting staffing needs, writing position descriptions/functional statements, developing job analyses, preparing performance plans and appraisals, drafting disciplinary and adverse actions, ensures quality assurance issues pertaining to the service are documented and appropriate follow-up action occurs regarding any problem or recommendation found, participates with section supervisors in reviewing office needs, plans, and goals to develop budget data and justification for review and approval. OR, Education: Applicants may substitute education for the required experience. To qualify based on education for this grade level you must have: GS-11: Ph.D. or equivalent doctoral degree, or 3 full years of progressively higher level graduate education leading to such degree, or LL.M., if related. Combination: Applicants may also combine education and experience to qualify at this level. You must have an combination of specialized experience and education. Only graduate education in excess of the amount required for the next lower grade level may be used to qualify applicants for positions at grades GS-9 and GS-11. 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: Please read the entire announcement and all the instructions before you begin an application. To apply for this position, you must complete the initial online application, to include the initial online questionnaire and submission of the required documentation 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. To preview the application questionnaire, click https://apply.usastaffing.gov/ViewQuestionnaire/12937809. The application process is as follows: 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. 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, 04/30/2026. 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 of 1973 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. NOTE: 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. Visit the USA Hire Applicant Resource Center for practice assessments and assessment preparation resources at https://support-usahire.opm.gov/hc/en-us. 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: https://help.usajobs.gov/how-to. Your application status page is where you can view your application status, USA Hire assessment completion status, and review your notifications sent by the hiring agency regarding your application. 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

Application Deadline: 2026-04-30