Free Welder Job Description Templates

Good welders are hard to find and easy to lose. The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts about 457,300 welding jobs in the country with roughly 45,600 openings every year, most of them replacing welders who retire or move on, which means a small fabrication shop, contractor, or manufacturer is competing for the same experienced hands as everyone else. In that market, the job posting does real work: it names the processes and materials honestly, states the pay and shift up front, and tells a skilled welder this is a shop worth testing at.

At FirstHR, we build for small businesses that hire without an HR department, where the owner or the shop foreman writes the posting between jobs. The six templates below cover the real versions of this role: general, MIG production, TIG precision, pipe, structural, and the small shop fabricator-welder combo. Each is ready to use, with the safety section and weld test language built in. Fill in the bracketed fields, name your processes, and post.

What Does a Welder Do?

A welder uses hand-held or remotely controlled equipment to join, repair, or cut metal parts and products. The day-to-day work is reading blueprints and weld symbols, setting up the right process for the material, performing fit-up and final welds to specification, finishing, and inspecting the result, all while managing the heat, sparks, fumes, and arc light that make this one of the more hazardous skilled trades.

A welder job description turns that general trade into your specific opening: which processes, which materials, shop or field, what code requirements, what pay. The SHRM job description tools describe a job description as a plain-language summary of a position's tasks, duties, and responsibilities, and for the trades, plain language wins twice over: welders skim postings the way owners skim resumes, and the ad that names the work, the rate, and the test gets the callbacks.

Welder Duties and Responsibilities

Welder duties center on setting up and operating welding equipment, reading blueprints and weld symbols, performing fit-up and final welds to specification, finishing and inspecting welds, and following safety procedures around fire, fumes, and compressed gas. The exact mix depends on the setting, but the categories hold across shops. These are the responsibilities grouped the way the templates use them.

A good posting picks 6 to 10 specific duties from these categories and names the real work: weld production parts using jigs to spec, pass UT inspection on structural welds, weld pipe in all positions to qualified procedures. In a small shop, expect the list to extend into fabrication, finishing, and shop upkeep.

MIG vs TIG vs Pipe vs Structural: Which Welder Are You Hiring?

Welder is one title covering several distinct skill sets, and the posting needs to name which one you need, because the weld test, the pay, and the candidate pool differ for each. This table maps the common types to the work.

Which Template Should You Use?

Pick the template that matches the work and the setting. The core structure is the same across all six, but each one carries the processes, certifications, and language that fit a specific kind of welding. Use this guide to choose.

6 Free Welder Job Description Templates

Download all six as a single Word document or copy individual templates. Each one follows the same structure: company overview, job summary, key responsibilities, qualifications, work environment and safety, compensation, and how to apply, with the weld test announced in the application instructions. Fill in the brackets before you post.

Template 1: General Welder

The universal baseline for a small shop hiring a multi-process welder: blueprints, fit-up, MIG/TIG/stick, self-inspection, and the safety section built in.

Template 2: MIG Welder (GMAW)

For production and manufacturing: wire and gas selection, jigs and fixtures, daily targets, and consistent quality at pace, with shift and differential fields.

Template 3: TIG Welder (GTAW)

For precision work on stainless, aluminum, and thin gauge: tungsten prep, purge setups, cosmetic standards, and tolerances that pass inspection the first time.

Template 4: Pipe Welder

For code piping work: ASME Section IX procedures, all-position welding, x-ray and hydrostatic testing, confined spaces, and per diem fields for field jobs.

Template 5: Structural / Fabrication Welder

For construction and steel fabrication: AWS D1.1 requirements, full-penetration and fillet welds, heights with fall protection, and UT inspection standards.

Template 6: Fabricator-Welder Combo (Small Shop)

The do-it-all role for small custom shops: print reading, cutting and prep, fitting, welding, finishing, and helping load the truck. The honest version of the job that no job board offers.

Skills and Certifications to Require

For welding roles, the weld test is the real qualification, and the posting should treat formal credentials accordingly: require what the code genuinely demands, prefer the rest, and let the test decide. What separates a strong qualifications section from a weak one is naming the actual processes, materials, and standards.

Keep the language neutral and tied to the actual demands of the work, since the EEOC prohibits job advertisements that show a preference based on protected characteristics. Physical requirements and certification demands are legitimate when they reflect what the job genuinely requires, and in welding they almost always do, so state them plainly.

Safety and OSHA Requirements for Welding Jobs

Welding carries a hazard profile that the job description should acknowledge rather than hide: heat, sparks, fumes, intense arc light, compressed gas, and on field jobs, confined spaces and heights. Federal rules govern this directly. The OSHA welding, cutting, and brazing standard (29 CFR 1910.252) sets the general requirements for fire prevention, protection of personnel, and ventilation, and it is the baseline every shop, however small, is expected to meet.

For the posting, this translates into three practical moves. First, include a work environment and safety section that names the conditions and the PPE you provide: helmet, gloves, protective clothing, hearing protection. Second, make safety compliance an explicit expectation of the job rather than fine print. Third, if the role involves a forklift, confined spaces, or heights, name the associated training and certifications. Professional welders read a clear safety section as the mark of a shop that will not get them hurt, and the careless candidates you want to avoid read it as a reason not to apply. Every template above carries this section already.

How to Write a Welder Job Description

A strong welder job description takes about 15 minutes once you know the processes and the rate. Here is the process the templates are built around.

Welder Salary

Set your hourly range using government data as a baseline, then adjust for process, certification, and conditions. Welding pay spreads widely: production roles sit near the median while certified code welders earn well above it, and the posting should say what moves a candidate toward the top of your range.

The replacement-driven openings are the story for a small employer: tens of thousands of experienced welders leave the trade every year, and the shops that win their replacements are the ones whose postings state the rate, the shift, and the certification path plainly. Pipe and precision TIG work command the premium, shift differentials and per diem matter on field jobs, and a paid path to AWS certification is a recruiting tool that costs less than the turnover it prevents. Publish the range; pay transparency laws increasingly require it and welders skip postings without one.

Hiring a Welder for a Small Shop

Job board templates describe welders at large operations: one process, one station, a safety department down the hall. A small fabrication shop or contractor runs differently, and the posting that works describes that difference honestly. Here is how.

From Hiring to Onboarding

The job description is step one. Once a candidate passes the weld test and accepts, the same document becomes the basis for the offer letter and a safety-first onboarding plan. A welder's first week should cover the shop walkthrough, PPE and equipment issue, your hot work and cylinder handling procedures, quality and inspection expectations, and any qualification testing the role requires. Research backs the structure: Gallup finds that only a small fraction of employees strongly agree their organization does a great job of onboarding new employees, and in the trades a disorganized first week reads as an unprofessional shop and drives early quits.

If your shop runs production, the manufacturing onboarding guide covers the safety-first sequence in detail. FirstHR connects the offer, paperwork, and onboarding workflow in one place, so a small shop can take a welder from passed test to productive without a dedicated HR department.

Frequently Asked Questions