Program Support Specialist

Summary

These positions are located in the multiple locations throughout the Food and Drug Administration and which is the regulatory, scientific, public health and consumer protection agency responsible for ensuring all human and animal drugs, medical devices, cosmetics, foods, food additives, drugs and medicated feeds for food producing animals, tobacco and radiation emitting devices safe, and effective.

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Duties

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• Provides technical and administrative support to employees on a variety of program assistance functions.
• Logs, and tracks, the status of all projects.
• Tracks all interactions between teams and prepares regular tracking reports for staff, supervisors, and other officials
• Devises forms, prepares standardized letters, and sample documents to reduce repetitive paperwork.
• Plans, organizes, and carries out special projects, researches history of existing or previous guidance's, policies and practices.
• Ensures that information relevant to initiatives on the appropriate web sites is up to date.
• Assists management and staff in planning meetings or conferences with regulatory counterparts.
• Prepares various types of travel documents including domestic, international travel, as well as travel computation worksheet and reimbursement voucher, and other travel and training documentation as necessary.

Requirements

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Conditions of employment

• Citizenship Requirement: You must be a U.S. Citizen to be considered for this advertisement unless explicitly stated otherwise.
• Selective Service Registration: All applicants born male, on (or after) 12/31/1959, must be registered with the Selective Service System OR have an approved exemption. Visit for more info.
• FDA participates in e-Verify: All new hires must complete the I-9 form; this information will be processed through e-Verify to determine your employment eligibility. If a discrepancy arises, you must take affirmative steps to resolve the matter.
• Background Investigation Requirement: All employees must pass a security investigation. Failing to pass the background check may be grounds for removal or legal action. If hired, you may be subject to additional investigations at a later time.
• You must meet ALL requirements by the closing date of this announcement to be considered. Only education, experience, and qualifications attained by this date will be considered. You must continue to meet all requirements through the hiring process.
• Certification of Accuracy: All information concerning eligibility and qualification is subject to investigation and verification. False representation may be grounds for non-consideration, non-selection, or appropriate legal action.
• Direct Deposit: You will be required to have all federal salary payments electronically deposited into a bank account with a financial institution of your choice.
• Additional selections may be made from this vacancy, within the same geographical area, by other organizational elements from within FDA, through shared corporate recruiting activities.
• Must sign FDA Pathways Program Participant Agreement.
• Must serve one year trial period or the duration of the program.

Qualifications

The position of Program Support Specialist falls under the 0301 occupational series. To qualify for this position at grade GS-7/9, you must meet all requirements by 11:59 pm EST on 06/15/2026.

Minimum Qualifications:

Specialized experience is experience that equipped the applicant with the particular knowledge, skills, and abilities to perform successfully the duties of the position, and that is typically in or related to the work of the position to be filled. The specialized experience must demonstrate one year of full-time work experience , or the equivalent if part-time (for example, an employee working 20 hours per week for a 12-month period should be credited with 6 months of experience.) Experience may have been obtained in either the federal service or its equivalent with state or local government, the private sector, or nongovernmental organizations.

GS-07 : You must have 1 year of specialized experience equivalent to at least the GS-05, in the Federal service, which includes: performing a technical and administrative tasks for an office or individual, receiving incoming correspondence and visitors, keeping the appointment and meeting schedule for a manager.

-OR-

One full year (18 semester hours or 27 quarter hours) of graduate level education that demonstrate the knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to do the work of this position.

-OR-

A bachelor's degree with Superior Academic Achievement (S.A.A.) criteria. Must meet one of the following:

• Class standing- in the upper third of the graduating class in the college or university.
• Grade-point average (G.P.A.) - have a grade-point average of 3.0 or higher out of a possible 4.0 ("B" or better) as recorded on official transcript, or as computed based on 4 years of education, or as computed based on courses completed during the final 2 years of the curriculum; or 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.
• 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 below. These honor societies are listed by the Association of College Honor Societies

-OR-

A combination of specialized experience and education as described above that, when combined, equal 100% of the total requirement.

GS-09 : You must have 1 year of specialized experience equivalent to at least the GS-07, in the Federal service, which includes: performing office automation duties, maintaining and supporting the work of an organization, receiving and routing incoming and outgoing materials such as controlled or routine electronic correspondence, or keeping the appointment and meeting schedule for others.

-OR-

A 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., that is related to the position being filled.

-OR-

A combination of specialized experience and education as described above that, when combined, equal 100% of the total requirement.

NOTE: It is your responsibility to ensure your responses and appropriate documentation is submitted prior to the closing date. To verify your application is complete, log into your USAJOBS account, select the Application Status link and then select the M ore Information link for this position. The Details page will display the status of your application, the documentation received and processed, and any correspondence the agency has sent related to this application. Be sure that any uploaded documents you provide in your application are free of document security or compression which might render the document unreadable by our system.

IN DESCRIBING YOUR EXPERIENCE, PLEASE BE CLEAR AND SPECIFIC. WE WILL NOT MAKE ASSUMPTIONS REGARDING YOUR EXPERIENCE. Qualifications are based on breadth/level of experience. In addition to describing duties performed, applicants must provide the exact dates of each period of employment (from MM/YY to MM/YY) and the number of hours worked per week if part time. As qualification determinations cannot be made when resumes do not include the required information, failure to provide this information may result in disqualification. Applicants are encouraged to use the USAJOBS Resume Builder to develop their federal resume.

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.

Education

EDUCATION :

TRANSCRIPTS:

Positions which are scientific or technical in nature often have very specific educational requirements. You must submit an official transcript, unofficial transcript, or a list including courses, grades earned, completion dates, and quarter and semester hours earned. If you are using education completed in foreign colleges or universities, see the Foreign Education section below for additional requirements.

Pay careful attention to the Qualifications and Education sections to identify vacancies where a transcript is required. Even if you hold a similar position or are a current employee, you are not exempt from transcript requirements.

Electronic Transcript Caution : If you have obtained your transcripts electronically, the file might contain security measures that could prevent our application system from reading the file. Therefore, you should consider asking the institution to provide the file in a non-secured electronic format. Alternatively, you could scan or take a photo of the printed copy of the transcript. If your uploaded transcript cannot be read by our system, you may receive consideration and credit for the information we can access.

FOREIGN EDUCATION

Applicants using part, or all of their education completed outside of the U.S. to meet the qualification requirements, must have their foreign education evaluated by an accredited organization to ensure that the foreign education is comparable to education received in accredited educational institutions in the U.S. We will only accept the completed foreign credential evaluation.

To be acceptable, the foreign credential evaluation must include/describe at a minimum, the following information: (1) The type of education received by the applicant; (2) The level of education in relation to the U.S. education system, and state that its comparability recommendations follow the general guidelines of the International Evaluation Standards Council; (3) The content of the applicant's educational program earned abroad, and the standard obtained; (4) The status of the awarding foreign school's recognition and legitimacy in its home country's education system; and (5) Any other information of interest such as what the evaluation service did to obtain this information, the qualifications of the evaluator, and any indications as to other problems such as forgery. Note: Some positions require the completion of specific courses or a specified number of credit hours. Therefore, the foreign credential evaluation should provide information similar to that of an official transcript, to include a list of the courses taken, quarter and/or semester hours awarded, the cumulative grade point average (GPA), honors received, if any, date degree awarded.

Applicants can request an evaluation from a member organization of one of the two national associations of credential evaluation services listed below:

1. National Association of Credential Evaluation Services (NACES)
2. Association of International Credentials Evaluators (AICE)

Credential evaluations are not free, and applicants are responsible for the cost of the selected service.

For more information about this requirement, please visit the :

Additional information

More information on the Pathways Programs for Recent Graduates can be found at:

The Pathways Recent Graduates may be non-competitively converted to a term, career-conditional, or career appointment following successful completion of at least one year of continuous service, demonstrated successful job performance, and after meeting all other qualification requirements in accordance with 5 CFR 362.305. To be eligible for conversion to a permanent or term position, Recent Graduates must:

• Successfully completed at least 1-year of continuous service in addition to all requirements of the Program.
• Demonstrate successful job performance.
• Meet the Office of Personnel Management's qualifications for the position to which the Recent Graduate will be converted.
• Recent Graduates are on a trial period for the duration of the program.
• Positions will Require 40 hours of formal training per year.
• Must be a citizen of the United States.

Financial Disclosure : Please be advised that this position may be subject to FDA's prohibited financial interest regulation. If you are hired, you may be required to divest of certain financial interests. You are advised to seek additional information on this requirement from the hiring official before accepting any job offers. For more information please visit the FDA Ethics web page:

If you are serving, or have served in the last 5 years (from 06/15/2026) as an Executive Branch political, Schedule C, or Non-career SES appointee, HHS/FDA may be required to obtain approval by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) prior to beginning employment. You can find out if you have held one of these appointment types by looking at your Standard Form 50s in your Electronic Official Personnel Folder (eOPF), in Section 5 where the legal authorities are listed. If you have served or are currently serving, you must provide a copy of your SF-50, Notification of Personnel Action, documenting this appointment. In addition, you will be required to respond to the question in the assessment and certify your responses to the questionnaire.

Incentives: Incentives may be authorized; however, this is contingent upon funds availability. If authorized, certain incentives will require you to sign a service agreement to remain in the Federal government for a period of up to 3 years. Note: This statement does not imply nor guarantee an incentive will be offered and paid. Incentives include the following: moving expenses, recruitment or relocation incentive; student loan repayment, superior qualifications appointment, creditable service for annual leave for prior non-federal work experience or prior uniformed military service, etc.

• Pre-Employment Physical: No
• Drug Testing Requirement: No
• License Requirement: No
• Immunization Requirement: No
• Mobility Agreement Required: No
• Bargaining Unit : No

Candidates should be committed to improving the efficiency of the Federal government, passionate about the ideals of our American republic, and committed to upholding the rule of law and the United States Constitution.

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A career with the U.S. government provides employees with a comprehensive benefits package. As a federal employee, you and your family will have access to a range of benefits that are designed to make your federal career very rewarding. Opens in a new windowLearn more about federal benefits.

Eligibility for benefits depends on the type of position you hold and whether your position is full-time, part-time or intermittent. Contact the hiring agency for more information on the specific benefits offered.