Free Dermatologist Job Description Templates

Hiring a dermatologist is one of the hardest recruiting problems in American medicine, and it lands disproportionately on small, physician-owned practices. The country has roughly 12,000 wage-and-salary dermatologists for a population that needs far more of them, the residency pipeline caps supply permanently, and physician recruitment benchmarking research ranks dermatology among the longest specialties to fill, with median vacancy times approaching nine months. The job-board templates fail the practice owner in this market completely: one generic posting each, nothing on the medical-cosmetic-surgical split that defines the specialty, no treatment of the board certification and licensing layer, and silence on credentialing, the months-long process that determines when the new physician can actually bill.

At FirstHR, we build for exactly this employer, the small practice hiring without an HR department, and this page takes the practice's side of the search. The six templates below, general, medical, cosmetic, pediatric, Mohs surgeon, and a small-practice version written for the physician-owner recruiting against hospital systems, carry the real judgment calls as fill-in fields: the board-certified-or-eligible line, the clinical mix percentages, the supervision scope, and the compensation structure. If this is your first hire entirely, the guide to hiring your first employee covers what surrounds the posting.

What Does a Dermatologist Do?

A dermatologist diagnoses and treats diseases relating to the skin, hair, and nails, and may perform both medical and dermatological surgery functions. That is the federal definition, and the BLS occupational data behind it counts roughly 12,000 wage-and-salary dermatologists nationally, the overwhelming majority working in physician offices, while the O*NET profile maps the working reality: examinations and diagnosis, biopsies and procedures, chronic disease management, patient counseling, and the referral coordination a specialty practice runs on.

For the practice owner writing the posting, the specialty's internal splits matter more than the definition. Dermatology divides by focus into medical practice, the diagnostic core of chronic conditions and skin cancer detection, cosmetic practice, the consultation-and-procedure work of injectables and lasers, pediatric practice, a fellowship subspecialty with its own certification, and surgical practice, centered on fellowship-trained Mohs micrographic surgery. Most small-practice seats blend medical care with some cosmetic volume, but the blend is a decision the posting should declare with real percentages, because candidates in a scarce specialty self-select hard on the mix, the daily volume, and the support staffing behind both. The six templates below are organized around exactly these splits.

Dermatologist Duties and Responsibilities

Dermatologist duties fall into four streams: diagnosis and medical care, procedures and surgery, patient communication and coordination, and documentation and compliance. The weighting shifts with the seat, a medical dermatologist lives in the first stream, a Mohs surgeon in the second, but all four appear in every version of the role. These are the responsibilities grouped the way the templates use them.

A strong posting selects 8 to 12 of these and grounds them in the practice: manage biologic therapy programs with lab monitoring, perform 25 medical visits per day with two MAs in support, return referring physicians' patients with same-week operative notes. Specificity matters doubly here because the candidate pool is small and experienced: physicians evaluate postings the way practices evaluate CVs, on whether the details ring true. For a structured way to scope any role before writing it, the guide to defining job responsibilities walks through the process.

Which Template Should You Use?

Pick along the specialty's real axes: the clinical focus, medical, cosmetic, pediatric, or surgical, and the setting, with the small-practice version built for the physician-owner recruiting directly against hospital systems. Use this guide to choose.

6 Free Dermatologist Job Description Templates

Download all six as a single Word document or copy individual templates. Each follows the same structure: practice overview, job summary, key responsibilities, required qualifications, compensation, and how to apply, with the board certification line, clinical mix, supervision scope, and pay structure carried as fill-in fields rather than left vague. Fill in the brackets and post.

Template 1: General Dermatologist

The full-scope practice hire: medical care, screenings, biopsies, in-office procedures, and optional cosmetic services, with credentialing eligibility, supervision, and call coverage as fields.

Template 2: Medical Dermatologist

The diagnostic core: chronic disease management, biologic therapy programs with monitoring, skin cancer detection, and the documentation and prior-authorization work systemic treatment requires.

Template 3: Cosmetic Dermatologist

Aesthetics with medical standards: consultations, injectables, lasers, and peels, with complication management, delegation oversight, and the commission structure stated as a field.

Template 4: Pediatric Dermatologist

The fellowship subspecialty: birthmarks, hemangiomas, atopic dermatitis, and genetic conditions, with fellowship and subspecialty certification carried as deliberate required-or-preferred fields.

Template 5: Mohs Surgeon

Surgical dermatology: Mohs micrographic surgery, frozen-section interpretation, reconstructive repair, and oversight of the on-site histology lab with its compliance obligations.

Template 6: Small-Practice Dermatologist (No HR Department)

Written for the physician-owner recruiting directly: honest volume and support numbers, a what-we-handle-for-you section covering credentialing and malpractice, and application straight to the owner.

Board Certification, Licensing, and What the Posting Must Get Right

The credential layer of a dermatologist posting is denser than for any other small-business hire, and the items are separate requirements that postings routinely blur together. Board certification comes through the American Board of Dermatology for MDs, requiring three or more years of accredited dermatology residency before the examination, or through the American Osteopathic Board of Dermatology for DOs, and the ABD itself stresses that being certified is not the same as being licensed: every physician must separately hold a medical license from the state where the practice operates. On top of both sit federal DEA registration for prescribing controlled substances, any state-level controlled substance registration, and current BLS certification. Subspecialty seats add a fourth layer: pediatric dermatology fellowship and subspecialty certification for pediatric roles, and Mohs fellowship training, through programs recognized by bodies such as the American College of Mohs Surgery, for surgical roles.

Dermatologist Skills and Qualifications to Include

Physician qualifications run on verifiable credentials, demonstrated clinical scope, and the patient-facing craft references actually confirm, and corporate boilerplate, excellent bedside manner, passion for skin health, says nothing checkable about any of them. The strong versions are concrete.

Keep every requirement job-related and neutral, since the EEOC prohibits job advertisements that show a preference based on protected characteristics; in a credentialed profession the lawful, accurate filters are the verified credentials, the case log, and the references, not culture-fit language. The qualification small practices most often omit is temperament for the setting itself: a three-physician office has no administrative buffer between the doctor and the team, so directness, reliability, and decency with staff belong in the posting and in the reference calls.

How to Write a Dermatologist Job Description

A strong dermatologist posting takes 30 minutes from the right template, and its audience is the scarcest one in this series: a physician with multiple offers comparing your practice against a hospital system's salary and a private equity platform's signing bonus. The SHRM job description tools describe a good job description as a plain-language summary of a position's tasks, duties, and responsibilities, and for this role plain language means declared clinical mix, honest volume numbers, a deliberate certification line, and a published compensation structure. Here is the process the templates are built around; the guide to writing a job description covers the fundamentals beneath it, and the small business hiring guide covers the steps around the posting.

Dermatologist Pay

Dermatology sits at the top of the federal wage tables, and the structure of the pay matters as much as the level: production bonuses, cosmetic commission, and ownership paths move the real number well beyond any base figure.

Around the benchmark: production-based compensation, collections or RVU formulas on top of a base, is standard and should be stated as a formula rather than implied, cosmetic-heavy seats often add commission on aesthetic services and product sales, Mohs surgeons generally earn above general dermatologists, and underserved markets pay real premiums because they have the fewest alternatives. A small practice cannot usually win on base salary against a hospital system, so the posting should publish a credible range and then make the case the system cannot: clinical autonomy, schedule control, lighter call, direct ownership access, a partnership path where one exists, and CME, licensure, and DEA renewals paid. Physicians in a scarce specialty compare total positions, not just totals.

Hiring at a Small Practice Without HR

Hospital systems recruit dermatologists with dedicated physician-recruitment teams. A three-physician practice does it with the owner writing the posting between patients, against competitors with signing bonuses and relocation budgets. Here is the reality worth writing into the role.

From Hiring to Onboarding: The Physician's File

A physician hire generates the heaviest compliance file in small business, and onboarding should build it deliberately from the signature forward. The sequence: the signed offer from the offer letter template, the employment agreement an employment contract template structures, covering compensation formula, call expectations, and any restrictive terms, then Form I-9 and tax forms with the rest of the new hire paperwork, with payer enrollment applications submitted the same week rather than at the start date. The clinical ramp follows the pattern the guide to healthcare employee onboarding lays out: EHR training and documentation standards, supervision agreements for any PAs or NPs, referral relationship introductions, a schedule template that starts conservative and builds, structured the way the training plan template organizes it. Underneath it all runs the credential file, kept the way the guide to organizing employee files describes: every license, registration, certification, and agreement stored with its expiration date tracked and a named owner for each renewal, because in this profession a lapsed document is a billing event, not a filing error.

FirstHR runs this loop for practices without an HR department: e-signature on the offer, employment agreement, and supervision documents in one onboarding flow, document management for the credential file, employee profiles tracking certifications and renewal dates, and onboarding workflows that make physician number two exactly as documented as physician number one, at a flat fee a small practice absorbs without a committee.

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