We’re hiring a goldsmith for our in-house repair workshop.

About us

Johnson Jewelers has been family-owned since 1976 and is now in its third generation, with stores in Woodbury and Lake City, Minnesota.

We’re a stress-free, team-oriented shop. We educate first and sell second, and that goes for how we treat each other too.

The role

We are a full-service retail repair bench with a steady mix of everyday repair and custom work. Most days you’re working through job bags: sizing’s, retips, tightens, chain solders and clasps. Other days you’re cleaning up a casting for a custom piece or rebuilding a ring someone’s grandmother wore for fifty years.

Our gemologist and sales team take in the work and write the tickets. You’re the one who tells them what a piece actually needs.

What you’ll do

• Sizing: up and down in 10K–18K yellow, white and rose gold, platinum and sterling, with stock matched to karat and color so the seam disappears. Sizing beads, half shanks, and sizing channel- and pavé-set shanks, unsetting and resetting where the stones won’t survive the stretch.

• Prongs and heads: retipping, rebuilding and replacing prongs; replacing worn 4- and 6-prong heads; rebuilding shanks worn thin at the palm.

• Stone setting: prong, bezel, channel, bead/pavé and flush setting. Tightening and replacing melee, and setting center stones into semi-mounts.

• Knowing what comes out first: emerald, opal, tanzanite, pearl, and fracture-filled or otherwise treated stones before the torch goes anywhere near them.

• Chain and findings: soldering links on rope, box, cable, Figaro and Franco chain; replacing lobster and spring-ring clasps, box clasps with safeties, jump rings, earring posts and friction backs; bracelet safety chains.

• Torch work: hard, medium and easy solder, firescoat and pickle in gold; platinum with platinum solders and dedicated files and wheels so nothing gets contaminated. Spotting old soft-solder (lead) repairs before they hit the flame.

• Finishing: tripoli and rouge to a clean high polish, rhodium plating white gold, and matching satin, brushed and hammered finishes.

• Custom work: removing sprues and cleaning up castings, assembling mountings, fabricating from sheet and wire, and setting the finished piece.

• Laser welding: Solder repairs using a desktop Rofin Laser welder.

What you bring

• 5+ years at a full-time repair bench, in a trade shop or a retail store.

• Invisible sizing seams, even prong heights and tight, level stones. You can show us.

• Confidence in the torch in both gold and platinum, and you know how differently they behave.

• A diagnostic eye. You can put a piece under the scope and call out thin prongs, a worn shank, a chipped girdle or a past lead repair before anyone quotes the job.

• Organization. Job bags keep moving, tickets stay updated, and nothing sits.

• Willingness to take a bench test on our test pieces.

Nice to have

• CAD (Matrix, RhinoGold or Rhino) and resin printing for custom work.

• Laser or pulse-arc welding.

• Hand engraving, bright-cutting or wax carving.

• Jewelers of America bench certification (CBJ or CMBJ), or formal bench training through GIA, a jewelry trade school or an apprenticeship.

How we work

Every job is ticketed in a jewelry-specific software program with photos at intake, so you always know what came in and what’s going out.

• Our repairs carry a one-year warranty. The work has to hold up, not just look good at pickup.

• Before a job goes back in the bag: prongs even and tight, stones tight and level, seams invisible, no porosity or tool marks, and the inside of the shank polished.

• If it needs more than the ticket says, you flag it, and the front calls the customer before you go further. No surprises on either side of the counter.

Schedule, pay and benefits

• Full-time (Approximately 40 hours a week)

• Pay will be based on experience and your bench test. Pay is competitive within the industry.

• Earned sick and safe time.

• PTO, retirement savings account, employee discounts.