General Manager (Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Area)

COMPANY OVERVIEW

Craftwork is building a modern, technology-enabled home services company, starting with residential painting. We employ our painters full-time and manage the entire customer experience using proprietary software, which allows us to consistently deliver excellent quality and service while creating meaningful careers in the trades.

Founded in 2023, Craftwork currently operates in Charlotte and Raleigh, with plans to expand into three new markets over the next 12 months. We’ve grown to nearly 80 employees and have raised over $25M from investors including Y Combinator, Seven Seven Six, Slow Ventures, Forerunner Ventures, General Catalyst, and Lachy Groom.

POSITION OVERVIEW

Craftwork is looking for a Market Manager to own the performance and operation of our Raleigh market.

This person will serve as the single accountable owner for the market, with end-to-end responsibility for its performance. You’ll be accountable for revenue, profitability, customer experience, team performance, and execution across the full lifecycle of the business. This includes, but is not limited to, generating demand and selling work, recruiting painters, planning projects, resolving escalations, and ensuring every job is delivered to the highest standard.

You’ll work closely with Central Support and functional leaders across Craftwork, but those teams exist to support your ambition and operations. You own the outcome. The Market Manager is ultimately responsible for identifying opportunities and taking action to solve problems across sales, marketing, people, operations, and customer experience, in order to ensure the market is successful.

This is a hands-on, high-ownership leadership role for someone entrepreneurial and enthusiastic. The right person will be comfortable conducting an onsite sales walkthrough, building a local partnership, recruiting great people, owning market financial performance, solving operational issues, and spending time on projects to understand how work is actually being delivered. The goal is to build an increasingly autonomous, disciplined, and profitable Raleigh operation that consistently delivers exceptional work and can serve as the model for how Craftwork markets operate at scale .

OUTCOMES

Grow Raleigh Revenue & Profitability

• You’ll own the market’s P&L, ensuring it consistently achieves its financial targets.
• You’ll understand the drivers of market economics and take action across pricing, staffing, project execution, and demand generation to improve performance.
• You’ll manage the market with the discipline of an owner, balancing growth with sustainable profitability.

Build a Durable Local Demand Engine

• You’ll execute local field marketing activities that create awareness and generate qualified demand within the communities we serve.
• You’ll own onsite sales walkthroughs and build B2B, referral, and local partnerships that develop into repeatable sources of projects over time.
• You’ll continuously identify new opportunities to grow the market rather than relying solely on centrally generated demand.

Convert Demand into High-Quality Projects

• You’ll build trust with customers from the first in-person interaction.
• You’ll price and scope projects accurately to ensure successful and profitable delivery.

Consistently Deliver to the Craftwork Standard

• You’ll ensure projects are thoughtfully planned, staffed, and executed to deliver exceptional quality and a world-class customer experience.
• You’ll own escalations in the market, resolving issues quickly while addressing the underlying causes that created them.
• You’ll monitor quality, rework, and project performance and continuously improve the systems required to deliver great work.

Build & Develop a High-Performing Market Team

• You’ll recruit painters, project leads, and technical leads to support the market’s growth.
• You’ll set clear expectations, coach performance, and help team members develop the skills required to succeed and advance at Craftwork.
• You’ll ensure the market has the right staffing, capability, and leadership capacity to consistently deliver against its goals.

Create an Increasingly Autonomous Market Operation

• You’ll take ownership of problems across the market rather than allowing them to become recurring escalations to HQ.
• You’ll build the processes, relationships, and operating rhythms required for Raleigh to run effectively with leverage from Central Support .
• You’ll continuously identify friction in sales, operations, people, and customer experience and improve the systems required to solve it at the source.

COMPETENCIES

Zero-to-One Builder

• You’re comfortable turning ambiguous problems into clear plans, actions, and repeatable operating systems.
• You’re energized by building rather than waiting for processes, tools, or instructions.
• You’re low ego, highly accountable, and genuinely motivated by helping others succeed.

Management & Ownership

• You take broad accountability for outcomes and naturally step across functional boundaries to solve problems.
• You operate with an owner’s mentality and are comfortable making decisions with imperfect information.

Commercial & Sales Judgment

• You can build trust quickly with customers, understand their needs, and confidently guide them toward a decision.
• You understand how scope, pricing, expectations, and project economics interact.
• You’re comfortable owning a sales conversation from onsite walkthrough through close.

Local Growth & Relationships

• You’re comfortable building relationships from scratch with customers, businesses, community partners, and referral sources.
• You can identify creative opportunities to generate local demand and turn successful ideas into repeatable programs.
• You’re energized by being visible in the market and developing relationships that compound over time.

Operational Excellence

• You bring structure and discipline to complex, fast-moving operations without creating unnecessary bureaucracy.
• You sweat the details while remaining focused on the broader outcome.

Talent Development

• You set clear expectations, provide direct feedback, and hold people accountable while earning their trust.
• You can identify high-potential people, coach performance, and help individuals grow into greater responsibility.

Financial & Analytical Judgement

• You think naturally in revenue, margin, and efficiency when making decisions.
• You can use data to diagnose performance, prioritize opportunities, and take action.
• You’re comfortable owning a market P&L and understanding the underlying drivers of its performance.