What should a backflow tester job description include? (free template)

Duties and responsibilities.

Put the description in writing before the posting goes up.

The ADA treats the fundamental duties of a job as its essential functions, and a written description prepared before you advertise or interview is evidence of what is essential — a function can be essential because the position exists to perform it, because few employees are available to share it, or because it is highly specialised.

For a backflow tester that written list is also your screening rubric: it is what you quiz candidates against and what you grade the first season on.

Copy the trade list that matches your accounts, then narrow it to your jobs.

A testing seat centers on the field test itself: isolating the assembly, taking the readings, deciding pass or fail, and documenting the result on the test report.

The four assembly types the ASSE 5110 practical exam covers — RP, DC, PVB and SVB — are the ones your hire should be able to test, and the procedure matters: ASSE tests to multiple field-test procedures, including the USC 10th Edition, ASSE, EPA, Illinois, Missouri, one-hose and TREEO procedures, and some jurisdictions require a specific one.

Write down which procedure governs your jobs before the ad goes up.

Say which scope you are hiring, because "backflow tester" does not tell a candidate what your job is.

Testing and repairing are separate ASSE standards — 5110 Backflow Prevention Assembly Tester and 5130 Backflow Prevention Assembly Repairer, with 5120 Cross-Connection Control Surveyor, 5140 Fire Sprinkler Cross-Connection Control Tester and 5150 Program Administrator alongside them — so a test-only seat, a test-and-repair seat and a seat that also surveys systems are different hires, with different credentials to verify.

State the setting (homes, commercial accounts, municipal or water-district work, irrigation, fire lines), whether the job is testing only or includes repairs and rebuilds, and, where you bid fire-line work in Texas, the rule that shapes it: a BPAT may work on fire lines only while permanently employed by an Approved Fireline Contractor.

Hiring a helper instead of a credentialed tester is its own posting — put the level in the title.

The worker-side version of this question — what the work is like day to day — belongs to our backflow tester career guide; this page stays on the employer's side.

Physical demands, stated plainly.

Before a conditional job offer you may state the job's physical requirements — lifting a set weight or climbing ladders, for example — and ask whether the applicant can meet them.

Wherever your assemblies sit — mechanical rooms, pits and vaults, crawl spaces or rooftops — write the demands the job actually carries into the description: it tells candidates what the day costs their body and gives you compliant wording to screen on later.

Licence and certification requirements — worded exactly.

Do not write a generic "must hold a state license" line.

What governs backflow testing is set jurisdiction by jurisdiction, and it takes two shapes: a state-issued licence or an industry certification — sometimes both, and water suppliers may set requirements of their own on top.

A requirement that fits nowhere reads to a working tester as an employer who never checked their own market.

Name the jurisdiction, the credential's exact name and — where it has one — its class or level, and match it to the work you need done unsupervised.

The certification shape is ASSE 5110, the Backflow Prevention Assembly Tester standard.

Its eligibility path is specific: at least five years of documented related field experience, a 40-hour training course, a written exam, and a hands-on practical on the four assembly types.

ASSE certifications renew every three years, and recertifying up to six months early loses no time; 5110 recertification requires at least an 8-hour class plus a written exam (50 questions today, rising to 100 from January 1, 2027) and a practical exam.

Note the scope of the five-year figure: it is ASSE's own entry requirement, not a universal rule, and many jurisdictions run their own tester certification instead of or alongside it.

The state-licence shape exists too.

State-issued backflow tester credentials our research verified sit in Texas (the TCEQ Backflow Prevention Assembly Tester, or BPAT, licence), Arkansas (Assembly Testing Technician), Virginia (the backflow prevention device worker certification), Wisconsin (Cross Connection Control Assembly Tester), Minnesota (the RPZ tester and rebuilder credentials require current ASSE 5110/5130 certification) and Washington (the PL30 plumbing specialty requires a DOH Backflow Assembly Tester certificate).

Louisiana and Texas also offer a plumber endorsement route — the Water Supply Protection Specialist — with Louisiana's open to licensed journeyman or master plumbers (or licensed landscape irrigators) who complete a 40-hour tester certification, with ASSE or ABPA tester certifications accepted.

Texas shows how much detail a state-issued line can carry, because its rules are named.

The TCEQ BPAT licence is required for anyone who tests or repairs backflow prevention assemblies in Texas.

Eligibility takes a high school diploma or GED, two years of approved experience — master or journeyman plumbing work, water system operation, irrigation and fire sprinklers are the examples TCEQ lists — and a TCEQ-approved 40-hour BPAT course, with one year of the experience substitutable by 32 semester hours or 20 extra training hours.

The application fee is $111; the written exam runs at a TCEQ-approved computer-based testing centre and the practical is given by the training provider.

The licence is valid three years and renews with 24 CE hours, 8 of them hands-on.

If your market is not on this list, that does not mean it has no requirement — our research did not confirm tester rules for every state, so treat the list as coverage, not completeness; the career-side map continues in our guide to backflow tester licence requirements by state.

Use the template's placeholder until you have looked up the exact credential your jobs need, and if the right candidate may qualify after you hire them, say so: "or ability to obtain within [N] days" is an honest line, and the sponsorship door is real — Texas counts plumbing, water system operation, irrigation and fire-sprinkler work among the approved experience, and ASSE's path runs through documented field experience, the course and the exams.

Collect credential numbers on the application so you can check each one with the issuing body itself — the state agency for a licence, ASSE for the certification — the discipline our guide to verifying a licence before you hire walks through, and a step our how to hire a backflow tester guide puts before the interview.

Before an offer you may ask applicants about required licences and certifications and ask them to describe or demonstrate how they would do a task.

Verify before you post.

Tester credentials are jurisdiction-specific and they change.

Confirm the current requirement for your jobs with your state licensing agency — and with the water suppliers you report to, which may set requirements of their own on top — and treat this page as employer information, not legal advice.

Pay and pay-plan disclosure.

Post a real range — the low, the high, and how the plan works — because in the states that require it, the range is a legal requirement in the posting itself, not a nice-to-have.

Posting laws confirmed in our research (September 2026, from statute text or the state labor agency) include California (employers with 15 or more employees), Colorado, Washington State (15 or more), Illinois (15 or more), the District of Columbia, Maryland (for work performed at least partly in the state), New York (4 or more, for work performed at least partly in the state), Vermont (5 or more), Minnesota (30 or more in the state), Massachusetts (25 or more in the state, since October 29, 2025), New Jersey (10 or more, over 20 calendar weeks), Maine (10 or more, since July 29, 2026) and Virginia (since July 1, 2026).

Delaware's law is signed but not in force until September 2027, and it will not apply to employers with 25 or fewer employees.

Connecticut and Rhode Island do not require the range in the posting; each requires giving the applicant the wage range — in Connecticut on request or by the time of an offer, whichever comes first, and in Rhode Island on request and before pay is discussed.

Our research did not confirm the posting requirement reported for Hawaii, and city ordinances were outside this check; our research produced no closed national list, so verify each state — and each city — where the job is located or where applicants will work.

The state-by-state detail lives in our guide to pay transparency laws by state.

Several of these laws reach past the number, so build the posting accordingly.

Colorado requires a benefits description and how and when to apply in every posting; Washington and Minnesota require a general description of benefits; Illinois accepts a hyperlink to a public page carrying the pay scale and benefits; Washington, D.C. requires the minimum and maximum projected pay in every listing and disclosure of healthcare benefits before the first interview.

If the job is paid on commission, say so in the posting — New York's labor department requires it — while Vermont goes the other way: an ad for a commission-based job need only disclose that fact and may skip the range.

Name the pay plan itself — hourly, a per-test rate, flat rate, salary, or a mix — and settle the overtime math before the posting, not after.

The federal Fair Labor Standards Act follows the pay, not the label: a flat-rate tech is still owed overtime — the regular rate is total job pay divided by hours actually worked, plus half-time for each hour over 40 in the workweek; commissions — including on equipment sales or service tickets — count in the regular rate; a per-test bonus schedule announced in advance is a promised, non-discretionary bonus no matter what you call it; and the commission overtime exemption that can fit commission-heavy plans, section 7(i), applies only in a retail or service establishment, only when the regular rate exceeds 1.5 times the minimum wage and more than half of pay is commissions — whether a shop like yours qualifies is decided case by case.

If you pay per completed test, define "completed" as filed and accepted — not merely tested — so the pay and the paperwork land together.

Anchor the range to the market.

The OEWS series we use reports the trade as one combined occupation — SOC 47-2152 Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters — with no split for specialties like backflow testing, so our figures are the trade's, not a tester-only wage.

Within that series, at plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors (NAICS 238220), the median wage was $63,010 a year in May 2025 — the latest OEWS release, published May 15, 2026 — the mean was $71,800, and the range ran from $43,720 at the 10th percentile to $107,780 at the 90th across 330,570 jobs.

Nationally, across all industries, the median was $30.67 an hour ($63,800 a year), with the middle half earning $24.13–$40.92 an hour ($50,190–$85,110 a year).

Two cautions before you set the range: the figures exclude overtime pay, shift differentials and non-production bonuses like sign-on bonuses, while including commissions and production bonuses — so a tester carrying heavy seasonal overtime can earn above the table; and the combined series spans the whole trade, not testers alone, so treat it as trade context and let the credential move the offer within it.

State figures for your market are on our backflow tester salary page — use them rather than a competitor's ad.

Schedule, on-call, truck and tools.

State each of these instead of letting the new hire discover them mid-season.

Schedule: give the working days and hours and the honest shape of the year.

Many water suppliers and local codes call for assemblies to be tested on a set cycle — commonly annual — but that is a rule our research could not verify from a primary source: where it exists, the testing cycle sits with your local water purveyor or code, so write the season your accounts actually create.

Where your market stacks tests into an irrigation season or a spring surge, say so — candidates plan around it.

On-call: say whether there is a rotation, how often it lands on one tester, and how after-hours call-outs are paid — with that pay treatment in the pay section, not nowhere.

Truck and tools: say whether the shop provides a vehicle — and whether it goes home — or whether the tech meets at the shop.

For this seat the test kit is the tools question: say whether the company supplies the test kit and pays for its calibration, and on what schedule — calibration is the same local-rule territory as the testing cycle, so anchor it to what your water suppliers require rather than a guess.

Say what else the company supplies and what the tech is expected to bring, such as hand tools.

If you fund the credential's upkeep — the ASSE recertification class, written and practical exams, or a state licence's renewal CE, like the 24 hours (8 hands-on) a Texas BPAT needs every three years — name it in the posting.

That line recruits: it is the difference between a tester who renews on your dime and one who renews on a competitor's.

Each of the problems below lives in the copy, and each is yours to fix before you publish.

No pay range.

Where one of the posting laws above covers your shop, a posting without a range is a legal exposure — not a stylistic choice.

A licence line that fits nowhere.

A generic "state backflow licence required" tells a working tester you have not checked your own market: what governs is set jurisdiction by jurisdiction, and it may be a state licence, an industry certification like ASSE 5110, or both — with local water-purveyor or code rules able to sit on top of either.

Name the jurisdiction, the credential and its class or level — or state plainly that you will sponsor the right candidate through it.

The wrong gate.

Where the tester credential is the gate, a plumbing-licence-only line screens out exactly the people you need.

In Texas, the TCEQ BPAT licence is required for anyone who tests or repairs backflow prevention assemblies, so the tester credential — not only the trade licence — belongs in the requirements.

Read the requirement against the work you are bidding, not against the job title.

Age-coded wording.

Terms like "young", "recent college graduate", "boy" or "girl" violate age-discrimination rules unless a statutory exception applies, and help-wanted ads may not show a preference for, or discourage, applicants based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age 40 or older, disability or genetic information.

Describe the work, not the person you picture doing it.

Questions the posting cannot ask.

Stating the physical demands and asking whether the applicant can meet them is allowed, and so is asking about required licences and certifications.

Asking about past job injuries or workers' compensation history before an offer is not — keep those questions out of the posting, the application form and the phone screen.

Referral-only hiring.

Recruiting mainly by word of mouth through a mostly one-group workforce can itself be discriminatory if almost all hires come from that group.

Post the job publicly.

Small-shop assumptions.

Federal EEO laws cover private employers with 15 or more employees and the age law those with 20 or more, but state laws often cover smaller shops, so check yours.

Federal contractors must include the equal-consideration tagline in job ads; many other employers add an equal-opportunity line voluntarily.

Screening rules you have not checked.

Background-check, ban-the-box and paid-sick-leave rules were not verified state by state in our research — confirm the rules where you hire before you screen.

Eligibility verification, before the first day.

While applications come in, check whether your state mandates E-Verify.

Florida (private employers with 25 or more employees, since July 1, 2023) and North Carolina (25 or more in the state) require it for new hires; South Carolina requires every private employer to verify every new employee within three business days; and Arizona, Alabama and Mississippi require every employer to use it.

The thresholds reported for Georgia, Tennessee and Utah were not verified in our research, so check your state's current rule directly.

Federal contractors covered by the FAR E-Verify clause must enroll within 30 days of contract award.

With the copy fixed, put the posting where testers actually look: browse current backflow tester jobs to see the board as candidates see it.

Before you publish, run the wording past our guide to how to write a job ad for HVAC technicians.

When the replies come in, have your backflow tester interview questions ready before the first phone screen, and screen in a fixed order — credential verified at the issuing body first, then the candidate talking through a test procedure out loud; how to hire a backflow tester picks up the rest: sourcing, pay benchmarks, screening and the red flags specific to this seat.

This page is employer career information, not legal advice. Confirm licence and certification requirements with the issuing authority — the state agency, the certification body, or the water supplier and local code where the rule is local — pay-posting rules with each state labor department, and employment-law questions with an employment attorney.