Program Specialist

Program Specialist

Department: Department of Veterans Affairs

Location(s): Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Salary Range: $82289 - $106982 Per Year

Job Summary: Incumbent serves as the staff educator responsible for coordinating and providing medical center wide education program for non-clinical programs, encompassing all staff in medical services, patient care services, administrative operations, and organizational support service. Aligned under Patient Care Services, reporting to the Associate Chief Nurse of Medical Center Education.

Major Duties:

• Duties include, but not limited to: Administrative Management: Makes recommendations and develop actions which have a direct and substantial effect on MC's non-clinical education programs, which ultimately affect the quality of patient care activities and customer service. Provides advisory expertise and operational support to the Chief, Staff Development, in planning, organizing, directing, coordination, controlling, reviewing, evaluating, and improving the medical center non-clinical education, training, and employee development function. Develops courses for training programs and serves as the subject matter in the development of specific course content for complete courses. Administrative Program Planning: Formulates maintains a strategic education plan to address long-range professional and technical education program needs. In collaboration with the Associate Chief Nurse for Education in the development of the department's annual budget. Responsible for evaluating non-budgeted requests which may be complex and difficult to troubleshoot, and for reviewing each request and conduct market research to find the best pricing and securing the appropriate resources. Collaborates with the educational team members based on medical center priorities and staff activities. Interacts with managers and leadership officials to carry out educational functions. Coordinates medical center wide policies and procedures necessary for completion of work related to the overall education function. Staff Development/LEAD Program: Responsible for the coordination and oversight for the Leadership Effectiveness, Accountability, and Development (LEAD) program. Responsible for developing LEAD curriculum in conjunction with the Associate Chief Nurse for Education. The incumbent will develop/revise the application, determine a fair and equitable application process, contact selectees, review program expectations, coordinate program, and develop an evaluation process for continuous performance improvement for the program. Gives advice to employees on career development, training and educational opportunities, Finds and suggests ideas to eliminate barriers to effective functioning of the medica center's educational program. Serves as a consultant to the Chief, Staff Development, relation to the development and implementation of non-clinical educational activities. Employee Development Funding Program: Serves as program director for the Employee Development Funding Program, which consists of managing and dispersing funding for employees for professional development activities. This include the Employee Incentive Scholarship Program (EISP). Serves as the Chair of the Employee Development Subcommittee, which reports to the Education Committee on a monthly basis. Ensures compliance with national directives and guidelines, matching the content with organizational needs, and tracking the policy through to final leadership approvals. The incumbent is responsible for ensuring these guidelines are communicated to all employees. Work Schedule: Monday - Friday 0800-1630 Virtual: This is not a virtual position. Position Description/PD#: Program Specialist/PD01290O Relocation/Recruitment Incentives: Not Authorized Critical Skills Incentive (CSI): Not Authorized 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, 03/26/2026. 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 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-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: Manages and monitors all aspects of Employee Development Program including approvals, disbursements, accuracy of paperwork for professional development activities. Periodic reporting required to Associated Chief Nurse of Education, Designated Learning Officer, Medical Center Education Committee, and the Executive Leadership Team. Coordination of medical center wide education program for non-clinical programs, patient care services, and administrative operations. Primary contact person for training initiatives within the department. Comprehensive knowledge of and he skill to effectively communicate both verbally and in writing. Must be able to express information in a succinct and organized manner to all levels of the organization. OR, Education: Applicants may substitute education for the required experience. To qualify based on education for this grade level you must have 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. OR, Combination: Applicants may also combine education and experience to qualify at this level. 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/12914626. 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, 03/26/2026. 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: 2026-03-26