STATISTICIAN

You must meet the following requirements by the closing date of this announcement. Basic Requirements: A. Degree: that included 15 semester hours in statistics (or in mathematics and statistics, provided at least 6 semester hours were in statistics), and 9 additional semester hours in one or more of the following: physical or biological sciences, medicine, education, or engineering; or in the social sciences including demography, history, economics, social welfare, geography, international relations, social or cultural anthropology, health sociology, political science, public administration, psychology, etc. Credit toward meeting statistical course requirements will be given for courses in which 50 percent of the course content appears to be statistical methods, e.g., courses that included studies in research methods in psychology or economics such as tests and measurements or business cycles, or courses in methods of processing mass statistical data such as tabulating methods or electronic data processing. OR B. Combination of education and experience – courses as shown in A above, plus appropriate experience or additional education. The experience should have included a full range of professional statistical work such as (a) sampling, (b) collecting, computing, and analyzing statistical data, and (c) applying statistical techniques such as measurement of central tendency, dispersion, skewness, sampling error, simple and multiple correlation, analysis of variance, and tests of significance. In addition to the above, you must meet the requirements described below: For the GS-07 Level: To qualify for the GS-07, you must have one year of specialized experience at the GS-05 level in the Federal service or equivalent experience in the private sector. Specialized experience is defined as experience that has equipped you with the particular knowledge, skills and abilities to successfully perform the duties of the position. Such experience is defined as: Assisting in preparing statistical data for analysis; Assisting in analyzing statistical data using statistical software (e.g. Stata, SAS, etc.) Analyzing large-scale structured data using appropriate software (e.g. ArcGIS, QGIS, SQL Server, R, Python); AND Utilizing statistical analysis and statistical software to assist in producing reports. OR One (1) year of graduate-level education directly related to the position or superior academic achievement in a curriculum that is qualifying for the position to be filled. Note on Superior academic achievement (S.A.A.) – S.A.A. recognizes students who have achieved superior academic standing as evidenced by one of the three methods described below. In order to be creditable under this provision, superior academic achievement must have been gained in a curriculum that is qualifying for the position to be filled. S.A.A. is based on (1) class standing, (2) grade-point average, or (3) honor society membership:1.Class standing– Applicants must be in the upper third of the graduating class in the college, university, or major subdivision, such as the College of Liberal Arts or the School of Business Administration, based on completed courses.2. Grade-point average (G.P.A.)– Applicants must have a grade-point average of:a.3.0 or higher out of a possible 4.0 (“B” or better) as recorded on their official transcript, or as computed based on 4years of education, or as computed based on courses completed during the final 2 years of the curriculum; or b. 3.5 or higher out of a possible 4.0 (“B+” or better) based on the average of the required courses completed in the major field or the required courses in the major field completed during the final 2 years of the curriculum. (Grade-point averages will be rounded to one decimal place. For example, 2.95 will round to 3.0 and 2.94 will round to 2.9.) 3. Election to membership in a national scholastic honor society– Applicants can be considered eligible based on membership in one of the national scholastic honor societies listed in the following link: Honor Societies (https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/classification-qualifications/general-schedule-qualification-policies/#url=General-Policies) OR A combination of graduate education and specialized experience as listed above. The ideal candidate has: A strong interest in and intuition for applied microeconomics; Proficiency in programming languages widely used in economics, statistics, and/or data science such as Stata, R, or Python; Excitement about conducting data analysis on a wide range of datasets in support of consumer protection and competition missions of the FTC; Interest and aptitude in working with PhD economists on economics research projects that serve the mission of the FTC; and A desire to grow and build on skills in data analysis and microeconomics. For the GS-09 Level: To qualify for the GS-09, you must have one year of specialized experience at the GS-07 level in the Federal service or equivalent experience in the private sector. Specialized experience is defined as experience that has equipped you with the particular knowledge, skills and abilities to successfully perform the duties of the position. Such experience is defined as: Assisting in preparing statistical data for analysis; Assisting in analyzing statistical data using statistical software (e.g. Stata, SAS, etc.); Analyzing large-scale structured data using appropriate software (e.g. ArcGIS, QGIS, SQL Server, R, Python); AND Utilizing statistical analysis and statistical software to assist in producing reports. OR Two (2) years of progressively higher level graduate education leading to a master’s degree or master’s or equivalent graduate degree directly related to the position. OR A combination of graduate education and specialized experience as listed above. 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. The ideal candidate has: A strong interest in and aptitude for applied microeconomics, data analysis, and computer programming; Proficiency in programming languages widely used in economics, statistics, data science, and/or computer science such as Stata, R, Python, SQL, or C++; Excitement about analyzing terabyte size datasets to support competition and consumer protection policy and law enforcement; Experience conducting statistical, econometric, or data analysis tasks such as regression analysis, model evaluation, machine learning, or Natural Language Processing. The ability to learn new software packages quickly and apply new analytical skills under tight deadlines.
The FTC seeks candidates for the position of Statistician within the Bureau of Economics (BE). The position of Statistician is for an initial term of 14 months and is renewable up to four years. In this role, you will gain real-world experience working alongside economists to protect consumers and promote competition in the US economy.