Having a PhD offers no such guarantee in the federal government. I have a GS-11 friend who has an aerospace engineering PhD, granted only 4 years into her employment, but still no guarantee.<p>The GS grades are not about education, but job responsibility. The grade for a given position also depends on the agency you&#x27;re working for and where. An engineer with the AF working for ACC might be a GS-11, but a GS-12 if they switched to AFMC, or GS-13 if they did the same job with AFMC at another base.