Written by Acorn Sales Company, manufacturing stamps and seals since 1964 · Reviewed by Holly R, VP of Sales and Marketing at Acorn Sales, against Washington State Department of Licensing (DOL) on 22 September 2026 · Updated 22 September 2026
Washington requires a licensed geologist to obtain a seal, and the engineering geology specialty gets its own authorized design rather than its own wording. RCW 18.220.090 says each license holder shall obtain a seal of the design authorized by the director, bearing the licensee’s name, certificate number, and the legend “licensed geologist” together with any specialty in which the individual may be authorized. WAC 308-15-070 adds the specialty sentence and the sentence that governs every engraver: “Deviations to the authorized seal designs are not allowed.”
The Department of Licensing tells licensees in terms where to get one: “You should be able to get one from any stamp manufacturer.” The Department issues the design, not the device. It is not state property, it is not returnable, and no vendor is approved or excluded. What you are buying is fidelity to a published picture, which is why the most useful thing on this page is an instruction to pull the engineering geologist design from DOL rather than to describe it from memory.
Washington engineering geologist seal requirements at a glance
| Requirement | Washington rule | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Seal required | Yes. “Each license holder shall obtain a seal of the design authorized by the director.” Geological reports, plans and other technical documents prepared by or under the responsible charge of the license holder “shall be signed, dated, and stamped with the seal or facsimile thereof”. The rule repeats it: “Upon licensure, you must obtain a seal”. | RCW 18.220.090; WAC 308-15-070 |
| Required elements | Your name, your license number, and the legend “State of Washington Licensed Geologist”. “If you are licensed as an engineering geologist or hydrogeologist, the specialty must be noted on the seal.” The statute states the same list as name, certificate number and the legend “licensed geologist” together with any authorized specialty. | WAC 308-15-070; RCW 18.220.090 |
| Size and shape | Not addressed. Neither RCW 18.220.090 nor WAC 308-15-070 states a diameter, a dimension or a shape. The geometry is fixed by the authorized facsimile reproduced in the rule rather than by any stated measurement, and “Deviations to the authorized seal designs are not allowed”. Pull the design from the Department rather than assuming a size. | WAC 308-15-070; RCW 18.220.090 |
| Device allowed | “Seals may be physically or digitally produced.” The statute accepts “the seal or facsimile thereof”, and the Department describes the stamp as rubber, embossed or digital. Note that the signature must be placed across the seal, which in practice favors an inked or digital seal over a blind embosser on the signed original. | WAC 308-15-070; RCW 18.220.090; WAC 308-15-075(3)(a)(iv) |
| Signature and date | All three go on every final work product: stamp, signature and date. The signature must be original and written by hand or a scanned image of an original handwritten one, permanently affixed, applied by the identified licensee, and placed across the seal or stamp. No expiration date is required on or near the seal. | WAC 308-15-075(1), (3)(a) |
| What must be sealed | Every final geology or specialty geology work product prepared by you or under your supervision or direction and submitted to other parties as part of the public practice of geology. Figures, maps and plates bound inside a final report need not be stamped individually; unbound final figures, maps and plates must be. Drafts need not be stamped but must be marked as draft. | WAC 308-15-075(1), (1)(a), (1)(b) |
| Electronic seal | Expressly permitted. A digital identification must be unique to the licensee, capable of independent verification, under the licensee’s exclusive control, and linked to the document so that it is invalidated if any data in the document are changed. No certification authority is named and no certificate class is specified. | WAC 308-15-070; WAC 308-15-075(3)(b) |
| Renewal and lapse | The Department states it plainly: “It’s against the law to use your stamp while your license is expired, delinquent, revoked, or suspended.” Renewal and reinstatement run under RCW 18.220.110 and WAC 308-15-080, with retired status, withdrawal from active practice and reactivation in the sections that follow. | Washington State Department of Licensing, Stamp requirements: Geologists; RCW 18.220.110; WAC 308-15-080 |
| Firm requirements | Not addressed. Chapter 18.220 RCW contains no firm registration, no certificate of authorization and no firm seal for geology practice. The duty is personal: each license holder shall obtain a seal. We read the chapter’s section list and RCW 18.220.190 to confirm no entity credential exists. | Chapter 18.220 RCW; RCW 18.220.090; RCW 18.220.190 |
| Regulator | Washington State Department of Licensing, administering the geologist licensing program. The Geologist Licensing Board is created by RCW 18.220.030 and advises, but the seal design is authorized by the director. | RCW 18.220.030, 18.220.040, RCW 18.220.090 |
Does Washington require an engineering geologist to have a seal?
Yes, and the duty attaches at licensure rather than at first use. The second paragraph of RCW 18.220.090 reads: “Each license holder shall obtain a seal of the design authorized by the director, bearing the licensee’s name, certificate number, and the legend ‘licensed geologist’ together with any specialty in which the individual may be authorized. Geological reports, plans, and other technical documents prepared by or under the responsible charge of the license holder shall be signed, dated, and stamped with the seal or facsimile thereof.” WAC 308-15-070 opens with the same command in the second person: “Upon licensure, you must obtain a seal”.
Engineering geology is a specialty of the geologist license in Washington, not a separate license. RCW 18.220.010 defines a specialty as a branch of geology recognized under the chapter for licensure purposes and states that engineering geology is considered to be a specialty of geology. WAC 308-15-053 gives the specialty licenses as engineering geologist and hydrogeologist, and WAC 308-15-055(1) requires that you hold a current Washington state geologist license to be eligible for the engineering geologist specialty. That structure is why the legend on the specialty device still reads licensed geologist.
The department says any stamp manufacturer can make it
The Department of Licensing answers the purchasing question on its own stamp requirements page: “You should be able to get one from any stamp manufacturer.” There is no approved vendor list, no registration of the device with the Department, and no return obligation. The seal is not state property.
What the director issues is the design. RCW 18.220.090 requires the license holder to obtain a seal “of the design authorized by the director”, and WAC 308-15-070 reproduces the authorized facsimiles inside the rule itself. So the transaction is split cleanly: the state owns the artwork, you own the device, and any manufacturer may cut it provided the result matches the published design.
What the seal must carry, and where the specialty sits
WAC 308-15-070 is a single short paragraph and it is worth having in front of you: “Upon licensure, you must obtain a seal bearing your name, license number, and the legend ‘State of Washington Licensed Geologist.’ If you are licensed as an engineering geologist or hydrogeologist, the specialty must be noted on the seal. Seals may be physically or digitally produced. Facsimiles of the seal designs authorized by the director are shown in this section. Deviations to the authorized seal designs are not allowed.”
Four elements come out of that: your name, your license number, the legend, and for a specialty licensee the specialty noted on the seal. The statute phrases the same list a little differently, as name, certificate number and the legend “licensed geologist” together with any specialty in which the individual may be authorized. Read the two together and the rule’s fuller legend, “State of Washington Licensed Geologist”, is the wording to work from.
Three authorized designs, and the sentence that binds your engraver
Here is what makes Washington different from most states. The rule does not describe the seal in words alone. It reproduces pictures. WAC 308-15-070 states that facsimiles of the seal designs authorized by the director are shown in the section, and the rule then carries three images, captioned in order as the geologist stamp, the engineering geologist stamp and the hydrogeologist stamp. The Department publishes the same three as image files on its own site.
And then the sentence that decides how you should order: “Deviations to the authorized seal designs are not allowed.” That is not a style preference. It means the authorized artwork is the specification, and anything a vendor draws from a text description is a guess at a picture the state has already published.
We are going to be candid about the limit of our own research on this point. We could not download and read the three design images. The Department serves them as GIF files and our tooling could not retrieve the image contents, so while the element list above is complete per the rule text, the exact placement of the specialty wording on the engineering geologist design, and any additional graphic element in the authorized artwork, is not confirmed here. Pull the engineering geologist design from the Department’s stamp requirements page and send that artwork to your manufacturer. That is the correct procedure whether or not we had been able to read the file, because the rule incorporates the picture and forbids deviation from it.
The same number, a different design
It is worth being precise about how a Washington engineering geologist stamp differs from a plain geologist stamp, because it is not what a licensee coming from another state expects.
It is not a different number. Washington does not issue a second number for the specialty; the license number on the specialty stamp is the same license number. It is not a replacement legend either. The legend stays “State of Washington Licensed Geologist”, because engineering geology is a specialty of that license rather than a separate credential. What differs is the design. DOL publishes three distinct authorized designs, one of which is the engineering geologist stamp, and the specialty must be noted on the seal.
So the ordering instruction is not “change the wording”. It is “use the other artwork”. A licensee who tells a manufacturer to take the geologist stamp and add a word has deviated from an authorized design, which the rule prohibits in terms.
One stamp or two, answered by the department
Most states leave this to inference. Washington does not. The Department states: “You’re not required to get both a geologist stamp and your specialty stamp. However, you may do so if you plan to practice geology outside of your specialty.”
That is a useful sentence, and it makes the decision a practical one rather than a legal one. If all of your public work is engineering geology, the engineering geologist stamp on its own answers the requirement. If you also produce general geology work products outside the specialty, the second device is available to you and the Department suggests it for exactly that case. Two devices, one license number, two different authorized designs.
No Washington dimension exists
We checked for one and there is not one. Neither RCW 18.220.090 nor WAC 308-15-070 states a diameter, a dimension or a shape, and we reviewed the full section list of chapter 308-15 WAC to confirm that no other section in the chapter carries a seal rule. There is no Washington measurement to publish.
What fixes the geometry instead is the facsimile. The authorized designs are reproduced in the rule, the rule forbids deviation from them, and the proportions of the artwork are therefore the specification. A manufacturer scaling the published design sensibly and keeping every element legible is doing the right thing; a manufacturer working to a number someone read on a page about a different state is not.
As a manufacturing note kept separate from the rule, Acorn cuts every engineering geologist die round, with an impression area of 1-5/8 inches to 2 inches in diameter depending on the state specification. That is our own production range and it is not a Washington requirement, because Washington publishes none.
What has to be stamped, and what has to be marked draft
WAC 308-15-075(1) sets the scope: “You must apply your stamp/seal, signature, and the date on every final geology or specialty geology work product prepared by you or under your supervision or direction, and submitted to other parties, as part of the public practice of geology.” Three marks, every final product, whether you wrote it or supervised it.
Two subsections then handle the edge cases, and both are the kind of thing that gets missed. Subsection (1)(a): all figures, maps and plates bound within final reports or documents do not need to be individually stamped, signed and dated, but you must individually stamp, sign and date unbound final figures, maps and plates. A loose cross section handed to a contractor is its own work product. Subsection (1)(b): draft work products do not have to be stamped, but these documents and their associated figures, maps and plates must be marked as draft. The exemption depends on the marking.
The signature goes across the stamp
WAC 308-15-075(3)(a) defines a signature as a handwritten identification, or a digital representation of your handwritten identification, that represents the act of putting your name on a document to attest to its validity. It then sets four conditions. The identification must be original and written by hand, or a scanned image of an original handwritten identification. It must be permanently affixed to the documents being certified. It must be applied to the document by the identified licensee. And it must be “placed across the seal/stamp of the licensee”.
That last condition has a quiet consequence for which device you buy. A signature written across a blind embossed impression tends to obscure the impression and does not survive a scan. The Department lists rubber, embossed and digital as available forms and the rule excludes none of them, but if your originals are signed and then copied, an inked die or a digital seal is the practical choice for the signed original.
There is no expiration date requirement on or near a Washington seal, and no rule in chapter 308-15 prescribes what happens to the device on a name change. The seal is never surrendered.
Digital seals and the four tests
WAC 308-15-070 permits it in five words: “Seals may be physically or digitally produced.” The statute agrees, accepting the seal “or facsimile thereof”. What a digital signature has to do is set out at WAC 308-15-075(3)(b), which defines a digital identification as an electronic authentication process attached to or logically associated with an electronic document, which may include a scanned or digitized signature, and which must be unique to the licensee using it, capable of independent verification, under the exclusive control of the licensee using it, and linked to a document in such a manner that the digital identification is invalidated if any data in the document are changed.
Those four criteria describe a cryptographic digital signature in substance. What the rule does not do is name a certification authority, require a particular certificate class, or require a third-party issued credential in so many words. Read together with the seal rule, the sensible arrangement is a seal image drawn from the authorized design, applied by you, inside a signing workflow that meets the four tests.
What stamping certifies, and stamping work that is not yours
The last sentence of RCW 18.220.090 is the one that explains why any of this matters: “Each signature and stamping constitutes a certification by the license holder that the document was prepared by or under his or her responsible charge and that to his or her knowledge and belief the document was prepared in accordance with the requirements of this chapter.” The stamp is a statement, not a decoration.
WAC 308-15-075(2) carries that through to borrowed work: “If you stamp, sign and date a work product prepared by another geologist, you are responsible to the same extent, as if you prepared that work product yourself.” The rules of professional conduct at WAC 308-15-140 reinforce it, requiring a geologist to stamp, sign and date only professional work products prepared in the public practice of geology for which the geologist has direct professional knowledge and is in responsible charge, prohibiting taking credit for work conducted by others, and prohibiting permitting the publication or use of another geologist’s name or geological work in association with fraudulent activities.
Two more ways to misuse the device are worth naming. Using it while your license is expired, delinquent, revoked or suspended is against the law, in the Department’s own words. And deviating from the authorized seal design is itself a violation of WAC 308-15-070, which is the reason the artwork question above is not a detail.
Ordering a Washington engineering geologist stamp
Start by getting the artwork. Open the Department’s stamp requirements page for geologists, take the engineering geologist design, and send that image with your order along with your name and your license number. That is the whole specification, because the rule incorporates the design by picture and forbids deviation from it. Do not ask a manufacturer to compose a Washington face from a description, and do not send a date or a signature, since the signature is written across the stamp by hand and no expiration date belongs on the die.
Because the signature crosses the face, an inked die is the working choice for signed originals. The Engineering Geologist Self Inking Rubber Stamp of Seal at $39.95 carries its own pad. The Regular Rubber Stamp of Seal at $34.95 is the traditional hand stamp used with a separate pad and is the one we point at for Mylar. The MaxLight Pre Inked Rubber Stamp of Seal at $46.95 and the Slim Pre-Inked Rubber Stamp of Seal at $46.95 hold the finest lines, which helps when a published design has to be reproduced closely.
If you want an embossed impression as well, the Handheld Seal Embosser is $46.95, the Desk Seal Embosser is $44.95, and the Long Reach Desk Seal Embosser at $129.95 reaches about 2-1/2 inches into a bound report. For electronic documents the eSeal Electronic Image Stamp of Seal is $20.00, drawn from the same authorized artwork so the digital and physical impressions read alike. The full range is in the engineering geologist stamps and seals collection, and if you practice outside the specialty as well, the second device sits in the professional geologist stamps and seals collection. Send the DOL artwork through contact us and we proof the die against it before cutting.
- Engineering Geologist Stamps and Seals
- Engineering geologist stamps and seals
- California CEG Seal: Two Devices, 1-1/2 Inch Floor
- Oregon CEG Stamp: E Number, No Published Size
Frequently asked questions
Does Washington require an engineering geologist to have a stamp?
Yes. RCW 18.220.090 requires each license holder to obtain a seal of the design authorized by the director, and WAC 308-15-070 repeats it: upon licensure, you must obtain a seal. WAC 308-15-075(1) then requires stamp, signature and date on every final geology or specialty geology work product submitted to other parties as part of public practice.
How is the engineering geologist stamp different from the plain geologist stamp?
It is a separate authorized design. The legend stays “State of Washington Licensed Geologist” because engineering geology is a specialty of that license, and the license number is the same number. What changes is the artwork: the Department publishes three authorized designs, one for geologist, one for engineering geologist and one for hydrogeologist, and the specialty must be noted on the seal.
Do I need both a geologist stamp and an engineering geologist stamp?
Not necessarily. The Department states that you are not required to get both, but that you may do so if you plan to practice geology outside of your specialty. One license number, two available designs, and the choice turns on what work you actually produce.
How big does a Washington geologist seal have to be?
No dimension is prescribed. Neither RCW 18.220.090 nor WAC 308-15-070 states a diameter or a shape, and no other section of chapter 308-15 WAC carries a seal rule. The geometry comes from the authorized facsimile reproduced in the rule, and deviations to the authorized designs are not allowed.
Where do I get the authorized seal design?
From the Department of Licensing’s stamp requirements page for geologists, which publishes the three authorized designs as image files. Send that image to your manufacturer. We could not download the files during this research, so we are not describing the artwork from memory; the rule incorporates the picture and forbids deviation from it.
Where does the signature go?
Across the seal. WAC 308-15-075(3)(a)(iv) requires the signature to be placed across the seal or stamp of the licensee, and it must be original and handwritten or a scanned image of an original handwritten signature, permanently affixed, and applied by you. The date goes on the work product too.
Can I use a digital seal in Washington?
Yes. WAC 308-15-070 says seals may be physically or digitally produced. WAC 308-15-075(3)(b) requires the digital identification to be unique to you, capable of independent verification, under your exclusive control, and linked to the document so it is invalidated if any data in the document change. No certification authority is named in the rule.
Can I use my stamp if my license lapses?
No. The Department states that it is against the law to use your stamp while your license is expired, delinquent, revoked or suspended. Renewal and reinstatement run under RCW 18.220.110 and WAC 308-15-080, with retired status, withdrawal from active practice and reactivation in the following sections.
