USAF

Special Duty Summary.  Performs as engineer, scientist, or engineering and scientific technician in support of scientific or engineering research and applications functions involving observation, study, and experimentation with the Human Systems Division or with the Research and Technology Laboratories, the Air Force Flight Test Center, or other Air Force activities. 

Duties and  Responsibilities:
Participates in research or engineering projects.  Participates in planning, coordinating, collecting, evaluating, and interpreting data and writing reports detailing the results of research or applied engineering investigations.  Explores and tests new ideas.  Assists or conducts research on different aspects of experimental problems in biological, physical, or social sciences; engineering; or mathematics.  Applies knowledge of scientific principles to problems associated with scientific experimental objectives.  Uses deductive logic and reasoning from known scientific principles or rules to arrive at conclusions about specific cases.  Assists researchers or engineers, or performs as the engineer responsible for the development or improvement of materials and products.  Checks materials quality and equipment performance.

Collects and analyzes material.  Performs as research worker or engineering technician aide in collecting information on experimental problems.  Studies technical journals and books to determine results of prior research on problems.  Provides abstracts or summaries of factual information relative to the problem, and assists in developing possible solutions.  Performs other duties that use specific, specialized expertise possessed by the individual.

Provides specialized management for acquisition programs.  Directs and participates in efforts to establish the technical, military, and economic bases for a program in the conceptual phase, throughout the validation, full scale engineering development, and production and deployment phases of the acquisition life cycle.  Interfaces with defense contractors.

Performs program office management.  Assists the program manager by performing various managerial and supervisory tasks associated with such functions as program control, configuration management, test and deployment, engineering, and integrated logistics support.  Assesses the program office’s overall performance, and prepares status briefings for the program manager's use.  Prepares key program documentation such as the program management plan and the integrated logistics support plan.  Takes part in organization, administration, and configuration management and preparing and executing system and subsystem management.  Serves as project officer or manager for a discrete portion of a system, either hardware or software, and system integration.  Responsible for identifying and resolving all subsystem, hardware, and software interface or logistic problems in support of system design.

Special Duty Qualifications:
Knowledge.  Knowledge is mandatory of research and scientific experimentation procedures and engineering practices.

Education.  For entry into this specialty, it is desirable to possess a bachelor's degree in physical sciences, engineering, or biology; or a minimum of 60 hours of college level courses including 6 hours of mathematics and 12 semester hours of science oriented courses such as physics, chemistry, engineering, biology, logistics, and industrial or computer science (or equivalent technical academic courses).

Training.  Not used.

Experience.  A minimum of 12 months "hands-on" expertise in an area of specialization listed in paragraph 2, Duties and Responsibilities, which can be effectively utilized in a specific Air Force Research and Development activity is mandatory.  This mandatory requirement can be satisfied by meeting one of the desirable education requirements in 3.2. above.

Other.
SDI requires routine access to Top Secret material or similar environment.  For award and retention of SDI 8E000, completion of a current Single Scope Background Investigation (SSBI) according to AFI 31-501, Personnel Security Program Management, is mandatory.  NOTE:  Award of this SDI without a final SSBI is authorized provided an interim SSBI has been granted according to AFI 31-501.

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