What should a journeyman plumber job description include? (free template)

Duties and responsibilities.

Write the description before you advertise the job.

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, essential functions are the fundamental duties of the position, not the marginal ones, and a written description prepared before advertising or interviewing is evidence of what is essential — a function can be essential because the job exists to perform it, because few employees are available to share it, or because it is highly specialised.

For a journeyman hire, that same list doubles as your screening rubric: the licence tier, the solo work, the permit and inspection duties.

Write the day at journey level.

The journeyman is your billable tier: the hire runs work on their own — diagnosing leaks and stoppages, repairing supply, drain, waste and vent systems, replacing fixtures and water heaters, setting and roughing in work that has to pass inspection — inside the scope their licence allows in your state.

What you will still train is everything shop-specific: your pricing, your field software, your documentation standard.

If the role includes bringing an apprentice along, write that in — it is a duty the applicant should know about and a selling point for the ones who like to teach.

Split the work the way your trucks run.

Residential or commercial.

Service and repair, new-construction and remodel rough-ins, or both.

Drain clearing and water-heater swaps, or permitted installations on occupied buildings.

A commercial journeyman plumber job description that names the building types, the piping systems and the permit regime is a different posting from a residential service one, so the split belongs in the title line as well as the duties list.

Then list the duties that make the job what it is at your shop: explaining repair options and pricing to customers, pulling permits and handling inspection paperwork, documenting work in your field software, keeping truck inventory straight.

Licence and certification requirements — worded as your state issues them.

"Journeyman" is a licence rung, and the rungs are not the same everywhere, so never write a generic "must hold a state plumbing licence" line.

As of September 2026, 24 jurisdictions issue a statewide licence with the apprentice → journeyman → master ladder, and there a "[state] Journeyman Plumber" line is a real, checkable credential — in Texas, for example, the Texas State Board of Plumbing Examiners lists Journeyman Plumber as one of its four licences, alongside Tradesman Plumber-Limited, Master Plumber and Plumbing Inspector, so "Journeyman Plumber (TSBPE)" names a real licence in that market.

In five states — Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Oklahoma and South Dakota — the journeyman rung is topped by an individual contractor licence rather than a master tier, and four — Alaska, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington — issue journeyman-level licences with no state master licence above them.

The trap runs the other way: in four states — Delaware, Illinois, New Jersey and North Carolina — the state plumbing licence has no journeyman rung at all.

Delaware licenses masters only; Illinois's state ladder runs from licensed apprentice to licensed plumber; New Jersey licenses only master plumbers while journeymen are registered; North Carolina issues technician and contractor classes.

A posting demanding a "journeyman plumber licence" in those states names a credential the state does not issue.

And in seven — Florida, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New York and Wyoming — there is no state plumber licence to name in the first place: cities and counties — or an industry board — do the licensing.

Florida's counties and municipalities issue plumbing journeyman licences under s.

489.1455, Florida Statutes, portable between Florida localities; in Clark County, Nevada, plumbers carry a journeyman or master card issued through the Nevada Board of Plumbing Examiners, an industry-founded board working with the county — not a state licence.

So write the exact licence class your state — or city — issues, with the issuing board named, or use the bracketed line in the template below and fill it in before you post.

If a strong hire can qualify after you hire them, say so: "or ability to obtain within [N] days" is an honest line.

Pre-offer, you may ask about licences, certifications, skills and work history, and you may ask candidates to describe or demonstrate how they would do a task; you may not ask about past job injuries or workers' compensation history before an offer.

Any certification the job actually requires, name it exactly as the issuing body does.

Verify before you post.

Licence names, tiers and thresholds change, and licensing is often local.

Confirm the exact journeyman-tier licence for your jobs with your state plumbing board — or with the city and county where licensing is local — and treat this page as employer information, not legal advice.

The tiers state by state, including what each no-journeyman-rung state issues instead, are laid out in our guide to how to hire a journeyman plumber.

Pay and pay-plan disclosure.

Post a real range — the low, the high, and how the plan works.

A number of states now require the range in the posting itself: as of September 2026, statutes confirmed to do so include California (employers with 15 or more employees), Colorado, Washington State (15 or more), the District of Columbia, Maryland, Maine (10 or more, from July 29, 2026), Massachusetts (25 or more), Minnesota (30 or more), Illinois (15 or more), New Jersey (10 or more employees over 20 calendar weeks), New York (4 or more), Vermont (5 or more) and Virginia (from July 1, 2026).

Delaware's law is signed but does not take effect 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: Connecticut requires the wage range on request or by the time of an offer, and Rhode Island requires it on request and before pay is discussed.

Our research did not confirm posting requirements in Hawaii or Nevada, and city ordinances were outside this check, so verify each state — and each city — where the job is located.

The state-by-state rules are in our guide to pay transparency laws by state.

Several of these laws reach past the number.

Colorado requires a benefits description and how and when to apply in every posting; Illinois lets a hyperlink to a public page carrying the pay scale and benefits satisfy the rule; Minnesota and Washington require a general description of 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 postings to clearly state when a position is commission-based, and Vermont goes the other way: an ad for a job paid on commission, in whole or in part, need only disclose that fact and may skip the range.

Name the pay plan itself: hourly, flat rate, commission, salary, or a mix.

Whatever the label, the federal Fair Labor Standards Act follows the pay.

A flat-rate (per-job) journeyman is still owed overtime: the regular rate is total job pay divided by hours actually worked, plus an extra half-time for each hour over 40.

Commissions — including on equipment sales or service tickets — belong in the regular rate too, and a spiff schedule you announce in advance is a promised, non-discretionary bonus no matter what you call it.

The narrow overtime exemption for commissioned employees of a retail or service establishment applies only when the regular rate exceeds 1.5 times the minimum wage and more than half the pay over a representative period is commissions — whether a shop like yours qualifies is decided case by case.

Resolve the overtime math before the posting runs, not after a flat-rate summer week.

On the number itself: BLS publishes no journeyman-only wage — its one plumbing occupation, Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters (SOC 47-2152), covers the trade at every level and the pipe trades alongside it.

Benchmark from the whole-trade tables on our journeyman plumber salary page, then set the range against the competing offers in your own metro rather than against a "journeyman average" of unknown origin.

Schedule, on-call, truck and tools.

These lines describe the day more concretely than the duties list does, so state each one instead of letting the new hire discover it.

Schedule: give the working days and hours and the honest seasonal shape of the work — if summer means six-day weeks of emergency calls, say that here.

On-call: say whether there is a rotation, how often it lands on one plumber, and how after-hours call-outs are paid, with that pay treatment in the pay section rather than nowhere.

Truck and tools: say whether the truck is company-provided and whether it goes home with the plumber, what the company supplies — fuel card, tablets, the large and specialty tools — and what the plumber is expected to bring, such as hand tools.

If you fund licence renewals, continuing education or certification fees, name it.

Licensed journeymen read postings the way managers wish candidates read resumes: fast, and looking for a reason to stop.

The fastest reasons to stop are all fixable in the copy.

No pay range.

A posting that hides the number reads as a number worth hiding.

In the states listed above it is also a legal exposure, not just a conversion problem.

A licence line the state does not issue.

A generic "state plumbing licence required" tells a working journeyman you have not checked your own market.

Worse for this role: demanding a "journeyman plumber licence" in Delaware, Illinois, New Jersey or North Carolina — states with no journeyman rung — or naming a state licence in the seven states where licensing is local — cities, counties or an industry board.

Name the exact tier and issuing board, or state plainly that you will help the right candidate obtain it.

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 imagine doing it.

Questions the posting cannot ask.

Stating the physical demands and asking whether the applicant can meet them is allowed.

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 vary by state and city and 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 requires private employers with 25 or more employees to use it for new hires, and North Carolina requires the same of employers with 25 or more employees in the state.

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 too.

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 journeymen actually look: browse journeyman plumber jobs to see what candidates see on the board.

When you are ready to run the full process, our guide to how to hire a journeyman plumber covers sourcing, screening, pay and the first 90 days, and how to write a job ad for HVAC technicians covers the ad-writing mechanics for both trades.

The day-to-day definition of the role is our journeyman plumber career guide.

This page is employer career information, not legal advice. Confirm licence requirements with the issuing board — the state, or the city and county where licensing is local — pay-posting rules with each state labor department, and employment-law questions with an employment attorney.