[Hiring] Instructional Systems Specialist @Office of Suicide Prevention, Veterans Crisis Line

Role Description

The employee will serve as the Instructional Systems Specialist in the Quality, Training, and Risk Management Department, Veterans Crisis Line (VCL), Veterans Affair (VA). The VCL is a 24-hour, 7-days-a-week, 365-days-a-year service aimed at connecting callers worldwide to a caring, qualified Veterans Administration employee. The VCL's mission is to provide 24/7, world-class suicide prevention and crisis intervention services to Veterans, Service Members and their family members.

• Accomplishes broad and complex assignments associated with conceiving, developing, implementing, and evaluating VCL/PSOC training programs and curriculum for VCL external stakeholders.
• Applies principles of organizational development to help build the capacity to design and develop training programs and curriculum focused on improving employee knowledge and understanding of evidence-based and best practice crisis intervention skills and agency processes and protocols.
• Provides independent, critical reviews of entire courses or specific lessons, focusing especially on the inherent logic, completeness, and efficiency of teaching strategies and methodologies, finalizes changes with the course developer and submits them for final quality review in accordance with prescribed completion dates.
• Constructs/develops practical exercises and examinations to meet and measure the specified training objectives.
• Recommends course structural changes to provide the proper sequencing of objectives, adequate spacing of practice and reinforcement exercises, and an overall instructional design whose learning outcomes are logically consistent with the teaching purposes.
• Analyzes organizational performance problems, new requirements and taskings to employees that are, or may become training issues, and recommends appropriate actions.
• Develops and delivers presentations to executive leadership and department leads to introduce and seek approval of new or enhanced external training initiatives.
• Reviews job and task analyses; task inventories; job and target population data; course participant's feedback and recommendations; existing course materials to identify training shortfalls and redundancies.
• Determines appropriate strategies to correct problems identified and makes recommendations to senior leadership.
• Serves as a subject-matter authority in the methodologies of adult learning, Interactive Multimedia instruction, Instructional Systems Design, Criterion-Referenced instruction, Competency Based instruction, and/or Experiential Learning Model instruction in the area of providing specialized training.
• Assists in developing training and education strategies and products for the VCL program. Conducts comprehensive literature reviews and performs professional research in order to identify innovative techniques and tools that will facilitate the tailoring of training content to meet the needs of the Veteran's Crisis Line, Peer Support Outreach Center, and its external stakeholders.
• Provides ongoing pedagogical training, guidance, and assistance to other subject-matter authorities who are analyzing, designing, and developing training programs and products.
• Performs other duties as assigned by management.

Work Schedule

• Tour of Duty is typically Administrative Hours.
• Compressed/Flexible: May be authorized upon supervisor approval after training per Agency policy.
• Remote: This is a remote position. Selectees will work 100% of the time in a non-VA-owned space outside of the local commuting area of a parent station.

Education Requirements

• Transcript Reminder: A transcript must be submitted with your application if you are basing all or part of your qualifications on education.
• Only education or degrees recognized by the U.S. Department of Education from accredited colleges, universities, schools, or institutions may be used to qualify for Federal employment.
• If you are using foreign education to meet qualification requirements, you must send a Certificate of Foreign Equivalency with your transcript in order to receive credit for that education.

Qualifications

• To qualify for this position, applicants must meet all requirements by the closing date of this announcement, 10/06/2026.
• 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.
• INDIVIDUAL OCCUPATIONAL REQUIREMENT (IOR): An IOR is a basic requirement that must be met in order to qualify for entry into this job series.
• GS-11 QUALIFICATION: In addition to meeting time in grade and the Individual Occupational Requirement (IOR), all applicants must also meet the following specialized experience and/or education in order to qualify for this position at the GS-11 grade.

Requirements

• Specialized Experience: You must have one year of specialized experience equivalent to at least the next lower grade (GS-09).
• OR Education: 3 years of progressively higher-level graduate education leading to a Ph.D. degree or Ph.D. or equivalent doctoral degree.
• OR Combination: Equivalent combination of successfully completed graduate education and specialized experience may be used to meet the total experience requirements.

Physical Requirements

The work is typically sedentary and is performed while sitting at a desk, in conferences, briefings, meetings, etc. There may be occasional visits to other staff offices to observe employees at work.