What should a 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.

If you need the day-to-day definition of the role first, the plumber career guide covers what the job is; this page stays on the employer's side of it.

Split the work the way your trucks actually run.

Residential or commercial.

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

Drain clearing and water-heater replacements, or full installations that pass inspection the first time.

Maintenance agreements or emergency call-outs.

A plumber who has spent the year on new-construction rough-ins reads an emergency service posting as a different job, and vice versa, so the split is the fastest signal your posting gives about fit.

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

Physical demands, stated plainly.

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

Putting them in the description does double duty: it tells candidates what the day costs their body, and it gives you compliant wording to screen on later.

Licence and certification requirements — worded exactly.

Never write a generic "must hold a state plumbing licence" line: names, tiers and issuing authorities differ by state, and a requirement that fits no state reads to a working plumber as an employer who has not checked their own market.

Texas, for example, licenses plumbers statewide through the Texas State Board of Plumbing Examiners, whose four licences are Tradesman Plumber-Limited, Journeyman Plumber, Master Plumber and Plumbing Inspector — so "Journeyman Plumber (TSBPE)" is a real, checkable line there.

As of September 2026, 24 jurisdictions issue a statewide licence with the apprentice → journeyman → master ladder, but Alaska, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington issue a journeyman-level licence with no state master licence — a posting demanding a "master plumber" there screens out candidates on a tier the state does not issue.

In at least seven states — Florida, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New York and Wyoming — there is no state plumber licence: cities and counties do the licensing, and in Nevada the journeyman and master cards used in Clark County and Reno come from the Nevada Board of Plumbing Examiners, an industry-founded board — not a state agency.

Ohio licenses plumbing contractors — businesses — only, with no individual plumber licence to name.

So do not assume every state licenses plumbers, and never treat a licence title from one state as the same credential in the next.

Write the exact licence class your state, or city, requires, with the state named, or use the placeholder line in the template below and fill it before you post.

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

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

Verify before you post.

Licence classes and thresholds change, and licensing is often local.

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

The full state-by-state licence tiers are laid out in our guide to how to hire a 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 require a pay range in job postings 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), 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.

Connecticut and Rhode Island do not require the range in the posting but require the wage range on request, by the time of an offer, or 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.

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 it — postings must clearly state if 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 — plumbing shops run all of them.

Whatever the mix, the federal Fair Labor Standards Act follows the pay, not the posting.

A flat-rate tech 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 — count 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 you write the posting, not after a tech works a flat-rate summer week.

For the market numbers behind the range — median wages and percentiles, nationally and by state — use our plumber salary page rather than a competitor's ad.

Schedule, on-call, truck and tools.

These four lines filter more plumbers than any perk, 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; plumbers read paid renewals as a signal you run a legitimate shop.

Good plumbers read postings the way managers wish candidates read resumes: fast, and looking for reasons to stop.

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

No pay range.

Plumbers shop jobs on pay, and 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 that fits no state.

A generic "state plumbing licence required" tells a working plumber you have not checked your own market — and in the states where cities and counties issue the licences, there is no state licence to name in the first place.

Name the licence, the tier and the state, 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 and North Carolina require private employers with 25 or more employees to use 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 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 plumbers actually look: browse current 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 plumber covers sourcing, screening, pay and the first 90 days, and onboarding new technicians is what turns a good posting into a retention story.

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.