Licensed Land Surveyor (PLS) Job Description Template (Duties, Requirements, Pay Line)

A job description for a licensed land surveyor has five jobs: name the license, list the work, describe the conditions, state the pay, and keep every line truthful to the seat.

A vague surveyor ad can describe a crew lead, an office signer or a field-heavy project runner.

Write the description for the seat you actually have.

The same template covers a field-first PLS who runs crews all week, an office-weighted PLS who seals and checks, and a senior land surveyor who supervises other licensees.

Change the duties and the reporting line; keep the sections.

Key duties and responsibilities

List duties by the work your firm sells, not by a generic title.

Work types a PLS seat can cover: boundary retracement and subdivision plats, ALTA/NSPS land title surveys, topographic surveys, construction layout and staking, control surveys, and drone or LiDAR mapping oversight.

Keep the mix honest — the candidate who wants boundary work and the candidate who wants construction staking are different applicants.

Then write the license half of the seat.

The signing half of the work is judgment: planning surveys, deciding what evidence to tie, checking crew work, writing or reviewing legal descriptions, and sealing plats and reports.

The NCEES Model Law — a model the states adapt, not any state's law — defines responsible charge as direct control and personal supervision of surveying work.

Your board's own definition controls, so phrase the duty your state's way when the seat's authority matters.

Finish the section with the reporting line and the office half.

Name who the surveyor reports to and which crews and staff they direct.

Then cover the record research they own — deeds, plats, monument evidence — their part in scoping and client communication, and whether they mentor staff working toward licensure.

Required vs preferred licenses, certifications and experience

The license is the requirement, in your state's words.

Surveyors must be licensed before they can certify legal documents and provide surveying services to the public, as BLS puts it, so the seat that signs needs the license your state's board issued — in the exact title your state uses.

Write "Licensed as a [state license title] in [State], in good standing," and add "or able to obtain licensure by comity" only if you will genuinely support the out-of-state path — and ask your state board what it requires before you advertise that line.

Keep education and experience as your seat's requirements rather than a national rule.

BLS lists a bachelor's degree as the typical entry-level education for surveyors, and boards write their own education and experience routes, so requirements vary by state.

Ask for the record behind the license: years on the work type, plans and reports signed, crews run.

Separate required from preferred cleanly.

Required: the license, the experience the seat needs, and anything the work itself demands.

Preferred: what you would train on.

If this surveyor will fly the firm's drone under the FAA's Small UAS Rule (Part 107), flying under that rule takes an FAA Remote Pilot Certificate.

A person without the certificate may manipulate the controls only under the direct supervision of a certificated remote pilot in command who can immediately take control (14 CFR 107.12).

Ask for the certificate when the pilot's seat is part of this job; list it as preferred when a certificated crew member already flies for you.

Verification beats assertion.

Ask for the license number and issuing state with the application, and check status and class in your state board's own lookup before interviews — not after the offer.

Field conditions, travel and physical requirements

Say the split plainly: what share of the week is field, what share is office, and what the field half looks like.

BLS describes survey fieldwork as outdoors in all weather, walking long distances, standing for long periods and sometimes climbing hills with heavy instrument packs; near traffic, surveyors generally wear brightly colored or reflective vests.

A posting that hides a field-heavy seat from a candidate who wants office work wastes everyone's month.

For a reference point on the occupation, O*NET's work-context survey of surveyors found 60 percent work outdoors exposed to all weather every day, 47 percent work indoors in a controlled environment every day, and 55 percent report a typical 40-hour week.

Your seat's split is yours to state, so write it from your own workload.

State travel the way the job runs: local day work, multi-day runs, or occasional site visits — and whether overnight travel carries a per diem under your travel policy.

Keep the dollar rules in the policy and say in the posting where it lives, so the candidate can read it before accepting.

Physical requirements belong in the ad too.

BLS lists physical stamina among the qualities surveyors need, and your seat's specifics — terrain, carrying, standing, traffic exposure — are yours to describe.

Write what the job actually asks; "able to carry instruments and stakes over rough ground through a full field day" tells candidates more than "field work required."

How to write the pay and benefits line

Put a real range in the posting.

For a labeled benchmark, BLS's OEWS for May 2025 puts surveyors (SOC 17-1022, all industries) at a national median of $75,440 a year ($36.27 an hour), with the middle half between $58,170 and $98,130.

The occupation counts licensed and unlicensed surveyors together and BLS publishes no PLS-only wage, so treat the figures as a bracket around the license and set the actual offer from your market and your pay history.

The industry row that includes survey firms sits close by.

Within architectural, engineering and related services (NAICS 541300), the OEWS median for surveyors was $73,320 in May 2025.

Label it as the industry row, not survey-firm pay — BLS publishes no wage for survey firms alone.

For the full percentile table and the state figures, see the licensed land surveyor (PLS) pay data.

Settle overtime treatment before you publish a salary line.

The federal salary level for the white-collar exemptions is $684 per week, reinstated effective May 15, 2026.

Land surveyors are not named on the list of occupations that generally qualify as learned professionals.

On the prevailing-wage side, DOL's 2023 Davis-Bacon rule preamble said licensed surveyors may in some cases be learned professionals, while cautioning the conclusion may vary where a state's licensing route does not customarily require a prolonged course of specialized intellectual instruction.

That conclusion is about Davis-Bacon coverage, not an FLSA ruling, and classification is fact-specific either way — confirm the seat's treatment before the ad calls a salary exempt.

Decide what the line says about hours and drive time, because field schedules make it material.

Under the FLSA, travel from job site to job site during the workday counts as hours worked.

So does the drive from a meeting place such as your shop to the work site, when the employee is required to report there to receive instructions, do other work, or pick up and carry tools.

State how those hours are captured and paid.

Benefits belong in the line as the firm's own offer: health coverage, retirement, PTO, vehicle or truck policy, per diem policy, and support for license renewal and continuing education.

Name what you actually provide — no invented industry norms.

Two posting laws our research verified, in case you hire there: Colorado's Equal Pay for Equal Work Act requires compensation disclosure in all job postings, internal and public, including information about benefits and how and when to apply.

Washington requires employers with 15 or more employees to disclose the wage scale or salary range and a general description of all benefits and other compensation in each posting.

States differ and rules change, so check the current requirement with your state labor agency wherever you hire.

The posting is live.

The mistakes below are the ones that quietly empty the funnel — fix them before you spend money boosting the ad.

Mistakes that shrink your applicant pool

• No pay range. An ad without a range asks candidates to guess instead of answering. In the states that require pay disclosure, the range is not optional anyway.
• A vague license line. "Surveyor wanted" pulls applications from crew members and confuses licensees. Name the state, the exact license title, and whether the seat takes responsible charge and seals work.
• A hidden field split. A candidate who wants office work will not apply to a posting that buries a field-heavy week, and a field surveyor will not apply to one that hides an office seat. State the split up front.
• Age-coded wording. The EEOC's own example is a help-wanted ad that seeks "recent college graduates": it may discourage people over 40 from applying and may violate the law. Write the requirements the seat needs, not the age band you picture.
• Inquiries the EEOC flags. Keep the ad and its screening questions away from the topics the EEOC flags as risky areas for pre-employment inquiries — marital status and number of children, religious affiliation, citizenship, gender, disability, medical questions and examinations, height and weight, and financial information among them. If you mention a field-skills test, keep it necessary and related to the job.
• No equipment or software named. Naming your instruments and software is the cheapest signal in the ad, and it tells a candidate what their first week actually looks like.

After you post: read the ad once more against what candidates see.

Browse a few live land surveyor jobs on the board and compare — pay range up top, a specific license line, the field split, the stack.

Then hold your posting to the same standard.

Screen against the license line first.

Collect the license number and issuing state with the application, and verify status and class in your state board's own lookup before you spend interview time.

Prepare the process before the first call.

Our guide to how to hire a licensed land surveyor (PLS) covers the whole seat — the license to require, the pay to offer, where to find candidates and how to screen them.

And when a candidate asks what the work is like, point them to the licensed land surveyor (PLS) career guide — and make sure your duties section tells the same story.

Employer information, not legal, tax or licensing advice; confirm the posting-disclosure, classification and licensure rules that apply to your firm with your state labor agency, the DOL or your state licensing board as the question needs.