Director of Operations

Accentuate Staffing is currently recruiting for a Director of Operations for a specialty contractor providing industrial design, installation, service, and maintenance solutions to customers in storage, food processing, pharmaceutical, and related industries.

We are seeking a Director of Operations to join the senior leadership team and work directly with the President to strengthen the company’s operational infrastructure, develop its people, and prepare the organization for continued growth.

This is a hands-on leadership position in a small business. The successful candidate will be comfortable working closely with field technicians, service managers, customers, and company leadership rather than operating through multiple layers of management. This individual will have seven direct reports and will be expected to remain close to the day-to-day business.

We are specifically interested in candidates who have worked successfully in a small to mid-sized specialty contracting environment. Experience exclusively within a large, highly structured corporate organization is not the profile we are seeking.

The ideal candidate will understand the dynamics of a specialty contractor that employs field personnel and generates recurring business through service and preventive maintenance contracts, in addition to project work.

A major priority for this leader will be to develop the company’s people. This includes strengthening frontline managers and creating a defined career and development path for technicians so employees understand how they can grow professionally, expand their skills, take on greater responsibility, and build a long-term career with the organization.

Responsibilities:

Operational Leadership & Continuous Improvement

• Provide leadership and oversight across company operations, ensuring field service, project execution, scheduling, customer support, and internal processes operate effectively together.
• Partner closely with the President to establish clear operating standards, expectations, accountability, and priorities.
• Evaluate existing processes and identify opportunities to improve efficiency, communication, accountability, customer service, and profitability.
• Develop practical processes and operating procedures appropriate for a 32-person entrepreneurial organization rather than creating unnecessary corporate bureaucracy.
• Map critical workflows and eliminate bottlenecks, unclear ownership, poor handoffs, and other obstacles affecting employees and customers.
• Establish meaningful operational metrics around service response, callbacks, rework, productivity, customer issues, project execution, and profitability.
• Promote a culture of continuous improvement, encouraging employees and managers to consistently look for better ways to serve customers and operate the business.
• Help lead the continued implementation and effective utilization of ERP and related operational systems.

The existing description makes this process-building responsibility particularly important: the organization wants someone who can establish visibility around escalations, callbacks and response times and improve workflows rather than simply administer an already mature operating system.

Service & Field Operations

• Provide leadership for a distributed workforce of technicians and service personnel working at customer locations.
• Support and develop service leadership while establishing consistency across regions.
• Understand and manage the operational requirements associated with recurring service and maintenance agreements, emergency service, scheduled maintenance, and project work.
• Ensure scheduling, dispatch, resource allocation, and customer response expectations support both customer commitments and company profitability.
• Serve as a senior point of escalation for significant customer or operational issues.
• Spend time in the field, shop, and customer locations to understand operational challenges firsthand and maintain credibility with field employees.
• Partner with technical leadership while recognizing that this position is an operations leadership role rather than the company’s refrigeration technical authority.

That distinction is consistent with the current description, which places technical solutions with engineering and service leadership while making the Director accountable for ensuring problems are resolved and customers are kept informed.

People Leadership, Technician Development & Retention

A significant responsibility of the Director of Operations will be creating an environment where talented technicians and emerging leaders can see a long-term future with the company.

• Lead, coach, and develop seven direct reports.
• Strengthen the capabilities of regional service managers through coaching, clear expectations, measurable goals, regular feedback, and leadership development.
• Develop a structured technician career path that identifies progression opportunities from developing technician through increasingly advanced technical and/or leadership roles.
• Establish clear competencies, skills, training, certifications, performance expectations, and experience requirements associated with each level.
• Work with leadership and employees to create individual development plans that support professional growth and company needs.
• Identify high-potential employees and create opportunities for increased responsibility and advancement.
• Establish consistent performance-management and review processes.
• Use metrics as a coaching and development tool rather than simply as a reporting mechanism.
• Help build a culture in which strong performance is recognized, expectations are understood, and employees know what they need to accomplish to advance.
• Improve employee retention by ensuring field employees have opportunities to gain experience, develop, advance, and build careers within the organization.

Financial & Business Performance

• Take ownership of service gross-margin performance and help ensure projects achieve expected margins through effective execution.
• Monitor rework, callbacks, productivity, utilization, and other factors affecting profitability.
• Balance customer service, employee development, operational efficiency, and financial performance.
• Work closely with the President and leadership team to prioritize investments in people, tools, equipment, technology, and operational improvements.
• Develop the operational capacity necessary to support responsible company growth.

Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree required.
• Progressive operations leadership experience within a specialty contractor or subcontractor, such as industrial refrigeration, commercial/industrial HVAC or mechanical, electrical, plumbing, controls, roofing, fire protection, or a similar field-service organization.
• Experience working within a small to mid-sized privately held, entrepreneurial, or closely managed business environment.
• Strong preference for experience in an organization comparable in scale to approximately $20M – $75M in revenue and 30–100 employees.
• Demonstrated experience leading field-based employees who perform work at customer locations.
• Experience within an organization that provides both project-based work and ongoing service and preventive maintenance contracts.
• Proven experience coaching and developing managers and frontline leaders.
• Experience creating or improving operational processes, standards, accountability systems, and performance measurements.
• Strong understanding of service operations, including scheduling, dispatch, customer response, resource allocation, service profitability, and field productivity.
• Experience using operational metrics to identify problems and drive measurable improvements.
• Ability and willingness to travel periodically to customer sites and spend meaningful time with field employees.