Accountant

• Reviews and interprets federal legislation, rules, standards, and regulations pertaining to accounting and financial management.
• Analyzes and evaluates agency-wide accounting operations, policies, procedures, and systems for compliance with standards and internal controls.
• Designs, implements, and assesses internal control processes and systems pertaining to agency-wide accounting and financial management activities.
• Prepares, analyzes, interprets, reviews, and presents accounting data, reports, and financial statements. Provides high-level technical support to the financial statement audit.
• Applies cost accounting methodologies to agency-wide data and systems, in partnership with business units, to report the cost of major activities for management information purposes.

Federal experience is not required. The experience may have been gained in the public sector, private sector or Volunteer Service. One year of experience refers to full-time work; part-time work is considered on a prorated basis. To ensure full credit for your work experience, please indicate dates of employment by month/year, and indicate number of hours worked per week, on your resume.

You must meet the following requirements by the closing date of this announcement:

BASIC REQUIREMENT (IOR): To be minimally qualified for this position, you must meet the following basic requirements:
EDUCATION: A degree in accounting; or a degree in a related field such as business administration, finance, or public administration that included or was supplemented by 24 semester hours in accounting. The 24 hours may include up to 6 hours of credit in business law. (The term "accounting" means "accounting and/or auditing" in this standard. Similarly, "accountant" should be interpreted, generally, as "accountant and/or auditor.")

In addition to meeting the basic requirement above, to qualify for this position you must also meet the qualification requirements listed below:

SPECIALIZED EXPERIENCE: GS-13 LEVEL: In addition to the basic requirements, you must have one (1) year of specialized experience at a level of difficulty and responsibility equivalent to the GS-12 grade level in the Federal service. Specialized experience for this position includes: Experience must demonstrate in-depth knowledge of, and skill in applying: accounting theories, concepts, principles, and standards sufficient to ensure financial systems, operations, and reports meet the requirements of law and regulation; wide range analytical and evaluative methods and techniques applicable to administering accounting and financial management programs; comprehensive knowledge of the theories, techniques and practices of change management, project management, and business process re-engineering to improve quality effectiveness; data gathering techniques and their use with technical program areas to ensure quality of analyses; selecting approaches and determining the methodologies to use; providing program and technical leadership to assess the effectiveness of agency-wide programs and policies; improving existing business processes, resolving all policy and complex program issues; and executing changes to the content and nature of financial reports and application of computer technology to accounting functions.

OR

COMBINATION OF EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE: A combination of education and experience that includes at least four (4) years of experience in accounting, or an equivalent combination of accounting experience, college-level education, and training that provided professional accounting knowledge. The applicant's background must also include one of the following:

1. Twenty-four semester hours in accounting or auditing courses of appropriate type and quality. This can include up to 6 hours of business law.
2. A certificate as Certified Public Accountant or a Certified Internal Auditor, obtained through written examination; or
3. Completion of the requirements for a degree that included substantial course work in accounting or auditing, e.g., 15 semester hours, but that does not fully satisfy the 24-semester-hour requirement of paragraph A, provided that (a) the applicant has successfully worked at the full-performance level in accounting, auditing, or a related field, e.g., valuation engineering or financial institution examining; (b) a panel of at least two higher level professional accountants or auditors has determined that the applicant has demonstrated a good knowledge of accounting and of related and underlying fields that equals in breadth, depth, currency, and level of advancement that which is normally associated with successful completion of the 4-year course of study described in paragraph A; and (c) except for literal nonconformance to the requirement of 24 semester hours in accounting, the applicant's education, training, and experience fully meet the specified requirements.

AND

TIME-IN-GRADE REQUIREMENTS FOR GS-13: Under merit promotion procedures, applicants must satisfy time-in-grade requirements contained in 5 CFR 300, Subpart F. Time is credited based on calendar time served in a grade, regardless of the number of days or hours worked.

AND

TIME AFTER COMPETITIVE APPOINTMENT: By the closing date (or if this is an open continuous announcement, by the cut-off date) specified in this job announcement, current civilian employees must have completed at least 90 days of federal civilian service since their latest non-temporary appointment from a competitive referral certificate, known as time after competitive appointment. For this requirement, a competitive appointment is one where you applied to and were appointed from an announcement open to "All US Citizens".

For more information on qualifications please refer to OPM's Qualifications Standards.