> It sounds like they don't know what they want.

In my experience, including at companies I've worked at, that's the case more often than not. Every department is perpetually short of employees, so the hope is to hire anyone halfway competent and figure out their real responsibilities later.

This here is the real secret.

>If they truly need people of different levels of experience, it would make more sense for them to write separate job descriptions that accurately describe the responsibilities of the role.

They would do that if not for laws like this. Instead the JD is a legal checkbox, and you get the actual responsibilities after you apply.