Supervisory Civil Engineer

You will serve as a Supervisory Civil Engineer with the Bureau of Reclamation. This position serves as the technical authority for civil engineering related to major Federal water and power infrastructure, providing authoritative engineering leadership essential to the safe, reliable, and resilient operation of Reclamation's dams, hydropower plants, pumping plants, and water conveyance systems across the western United States.

Major duties
Some of the major duties you will perform include but are not limited to the following: Provide technical and administrative supervision to professional engineers, program analysts, technical specialists, and support staff. Plans and assigns work to be accomplished by subordinates, sets and adjusts priorities and prepares schedules for completion of work. Evaluates work performance of employees, provides advise, counsel, or instruction to employees; identify training needs; find way to improve production and increase quality of work; develop performance standards. Serve as the Department of the Interior's (DOI) Dam Safety Oversight Officer advising the Commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation on implementation of Federal Guidelines for Dam Safety and facilitates independent quality assurance reviews of DOI Dam Safety programs. Responsible for Reclamation's Value Program ensuring compliance with applicable OMB and DOI requirements, developing Reclamation's guidance for value analysis and value engineering, leads selected value analysis reviews, reports on value analysis plans and studies. Responsible for Design, Cost Estimating and Construction Program ensuring reviews provide leadership with credible assurance that designs and cost estimates are appropriate and identify issues requiring attention; provides guidance and training on reviews, and plans develops and coordinate independent reviews of large water resources projects. Oversees Reclamation's Estimating Process Review Program providing tools that are technically sound, defensible, and effective in supporting leadership decision-making and communicating risk. Provides technical support for Indian Water Rights Settlements including assessing adequacy of designs, cost estimates, and construction methods for proposed water resources projects. Advises Department of Interior leadership on proposed settlement legislation and provides technical support to negotiation, assessment, and implementation teams.

Qualifications
All qualifications must be met by the closing date of this announcement – 10/14/2026-unless otherwise stated in this vacancy announcement. Competitive candidates must also meet Time-in-Grade requirements as defined in 5 CFR 300, Subpart F. For current Federal employees, if hours worked per week are not included on your resume, you must submit a non-award SF-50 as part of your application to be used to validate your work schedule and determine the amount of specialized experience that you will be granted. An award SF-50 will not be acceptable documentation for which to consider your amount of qualifying experience. For periods of time that reflect military service, the DD-214 or Statement of Service is sufficient to meet the work schedule requirement as the service dates will be reflected. For all other applicants who are not current federal employees, your resume must state either "full-time" (or "40 hours a week") or "part-time" with the number of hours worked per week to ensure proper crediting of specialized experience. Selective Placement Factors: This position requires a special qualification that has been determined to be essential to perform the duties and will be used as a screen out element. If you do not provide evidence that you possess the following selective factor(s), you will be rated not qualified. -AND- Minimum Qualification Requirements: To qualify for this position, you must meet the following minimum qualifications: Basic Educational Requirement AND Specialized Experience for the series to which you are applying. BASIC EDUCATION REQUIREMENTS: Applicants must meet the requirements outlined in either A or B below to satisfy the basic requirements for Civil Engineer at all grade levels. A. Degree: professional engineering. To be acceptable, the curriculum must: (1) be in a school of engineering with at least one curriculum accredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) as a professional engineering curriculum; or (2) include differential and integral calculus and courses (more advanced than first-year physics and chemistry) in five of the following seven areas of engineering science or physics: (a) statics, dynamics; (b) strength of materials (stress-strain relationships); (c) fluid mechanics, hydraulics; (d) thermodynamics; (e) electrical fields and circuits; (f) nature and properties of materials (relating particle and aggregate structure to properties); and (g) any other comparable area of fundamental engineering science or physics, such as optics, heat transfer, soil mechanics, or electronics. **OR B. ALTERNATIVE METHODS OF QUALIFYING: In lieu of meeting the specific educational requirements listed above, applicants may substitute four years of college level education, training, and/or technical experience that furnished (1) a thorough knowledge of the physical and mathematical sciences underlying professional engineering, and (2) a good understanding, both theoretical and practical, of the engineering sciences and techniques and their applications to one of the branches of engineering. This knowledge and understanding must be equivalent to that provided by a full 4-year professional engineering curriculum. ***The adequacy of such background MUST be demonstrated by one of the following: 1. Professional Registration – Current registration as a professional engineer by any State, the District of Columbia, Guam, or Puerto Rico. Absent other means of qualifying under this standard, those applicants who achieved such registration by means other than written test (e.g., State grandfather or eminence provisions) are eligible only for positions that are within or closely related to the specialty field of their registration; or 2. Written Test – Evidence of having successfully passed the Engineer-in-Training (EIT) examination, or the written test required for professional engineering registration; -OR- B. Combination of education and experience: course work as shown in A above, plus appropriate experience or additional education. College-level education, training, and/or technical experience that furnished (1) a thorough knowledge of the physical and mathematical sciences underlying engineering, and (2) a good understanding, both theoretical and practical, of the engineering sciences and techniques and their applications to one of the branches of engineering. The adequacy of such background must be demonstrated by one of the following: 1. Specified academic courses — Successful completion of at least 60 semester hours of courses in the physical, mathematical, and engineering sciences and that included the courses specified in the basic requirements under paragraph A. The courses must be fully acceptable toward meeting the requirements of an engineering program as described in paragraph 1. 2. Related curriculum — Successful completion of a curriculum leading to a bachelor's degree in an appropriate scientific field, e.g., engineering technology, physics, chemistry, architecture, computer science, mathematics, hydrology, or geology, may be accepted in lieu of a bachelor's degree in engineering, provided the applicant has had at least 1 year of professional engineering experience acquired under professional engineering supervision and guidance. Ordinarily there should be either an established plan of intensive training to develop professional engineering competence, or several years of prior professional engineering-type experience, e.g., in interdisciplinary positions. (The above examples of related curricula are not all-inclusive.) To qualify for this position at the GS-15 grade level: Experience: To qualify for this position at the GS-15 grade level, you must possess one year of specialized experience equivalent in difficulty and complexity to at least the GS-14 level in the federal service. Specialized experience includes the following: (1) The applicant must have extensive experience performing a full range of supervisory responsibilities: hiring, promotion, discipline, performance management, workforce planning, succession planning, and employee development for highly technical staff performing GS-13-level work. (2) Must have experience ensuring subordinate staff implement and adhere to Federal dam safety requirements, OMB Circular A-131, Departmental Manual policies, Reclamation Manual directives, and SAVE International standards. (3) Facilitating independent quality assurances reviews of Department of Interior Safety Programs, including providing respective Assistant Secretaries with associated findings and recommendations. (4) Overseeing special engineering studies and develops training materials and seminars related to DEC review processes, and approves technical studies performed by engineering teams. (5) Producing bureau-wide semiannual and annual reports summarizing value studies and cost savings. Volunteer Experience: 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; religious; 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.

How to apply
Failure to submit any of the above-mentioned required documents will result in loss of consideration due to an incomplete application package. It is your responsibility to ensure all required documents have been submitted. Do not submit photographs with your application package. Do not upload Adobe portfolio documents. HOW TO APPLY: Please read the entire announcement and all the instructions before you begin an application. To apply for 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 10/14/2026-unless otherwise stated in this vacancy announcement to receive consideration. Note: You will only be marked eligible for those eligibilities that you selected and provided the appropriate supporting documentation. The application process is as follows: Click the Apply Online button. Answer the questions presented in the application and attach all necessary supporting documentation. To PREVIEW the application questionnaire, select the following link: https://apply.usastaffing.gov/ViewQuestionnaire/13077022 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 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. 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. Applicants who apply under this job opportunity announcement agree to have their application, associated documents and applicable personal information shared with other Bureaus/Offices within the Department of the Interior (DOI) who have vacancies within the same occupational series, grade, full performance level and in the same geographic location(s), including within the same metro/commuting area. Applying to this announcement does not replace the need to apply to other job opportunity announcements for which you wish to receive consideration. 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, visit https://help.usajobs.gov/how-to/application/status.