Maintenance Technician

Job Description

Job Description

Maintenance Tech

You keep one apartment community working, and you are trusted to go inside people's homes. Both of those are the job.

Reports to

Asset Protection & Resident Experience Manager

Direct reports

None. You run the work and direct contractors, but nobody reports to you

Community size

About 300 homes

Location

Various Locations, Texas. On site

Living on site

This role comes with a subsidized apartment at the community and living there is a condition of the role. Terms are set out in a separate occupancy agreement, not a resident lease.

On call

You carry the community's emergency phone

Pay

Maintenance Tech I: $35,000 – $45,000

Maintenance Tech II: $45,000 – $60,000

Senior Maintenance Tech: $60,000 – $75,000

Plus the subsidized apartment and on-call standby pay.

› What this job is

You are the person who keeps one apartment community running. Repairs, preventive maintenance, getting empty homes ready for the next resident, and managing the contractors who do the work you do not do yourself.

You also live at the community and carry the emergency phone, so when something serious happens at night you are already here.

The part of this job people underestimate is the resident side. You are one of three people a resident ever meets, and the only one who goes into their home. How you behave in there does more for whether they stay than almost anything else we do.

› What working here is like

The Company's five standards are what we hire for. In this job they mostly mean: show up when you said you would, write down what you actually did, and treat every home like it belongs to someone you know. You are not back-of-house here. We treat maintenance as part of the resident's experience, not as a cost line, and we will back you to do the job properly rather than quickly.

› Going into someone's home

This comes first because it matters most. A resident is letting you into the place where they sleep, often when they are not there. Nothing else we do asks that much of them.

• Give proper notice of entry every time, in the form the lease and the law require. Permission last month is not permission today.

• Knock, say clearly who you are, and wait. Say it again inside if someone is home.

• Work clean. Drop cloths, shoe covers, tools on your mat and not on their furniture. Leave the place cleaner than you found it.

• What you see inside a home stays there. It is not a story for the office, another resident or a contractor.

• Leave a note every visit saying in plain words what you did. Coming home to a fixed problem and no explanation is half an experience.

• Be careful and kind around children, older residents, people who are unwell, and pets. You adjust to them, not the other way around.

• If a situation does not feel right, for you or for them, stop, step out and call your manager. Nobody will ever criticize you for that.

• Respond to everyone's request the same way. Fair housing applies to maintenance just as much as it applies to leasing.

› Our repair or the owner's asset

Upfrnt runs the community. The building still belongs to its owner, and so do the big-ticket items: roofs, structure, slabs, main lines, major systems at the end of their life. Upfrnt does not pay for those. Your instinct will be to just get it fixed, and for most things that is exactly right — but not for these.

• Identify where the line is and raise the right work order for the owner's approval prior to work execution. Most of what you touch is an ordinary repair and is simply yours to do. Some of it is not.

• When you hit the line, write it up properly: what you found, what condition it is in, what you expect to happen and when. Photos and readings, not impressions. Your write-up is what the owner's decision gets made on.

• Tell your manager the same day. A major system problem that sits in someone's head for two weeks becomes an emergency on a Saturday night.

• Keep the home safe and livable in the meantime. Temporary fixes while a decision is being made are exactly your job.

• Talk to the resident about it honestly. Do not blame the owner, and do not promise an outcome you do not control. We will train you on this conversation because it is genuinely difficult.

› What you will do

Repairs

• Take work orders, sort them by urgency, schedule them and do them.

• Hands-on work across trades: HVAC service and fault-finding, plumbing repairs, electrical within the limits below, appliances, carpentry, drywall, paint, doors, locks, hardware, and pool or amenity equipment where we have it.

• Diagnose properly. We would rather have someone who finds the cause than someone who is quick at swapping parts.

• Know which jobs Texas requires a licensed contractor for, and schedule a licensed contractor where it is required.

• Record every job in Upfrnt OS: what was wrong, what you did, what parts went in, what is still outstanding.

Preventive maintenance

• Run the preventive maintenance calendar and keep to it, including in busy months. That is when it earns its keep.

• Filters, smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, extinguishers, water heaters, HVAC servicing, seals, caulking, drains, gutters, exterior and roof checks, pool equipment.

• Walk the building on a set round and record condition against a written standard rather than by impression.

Getting homes ready between residents

• Scope the work needed on an empty home, do your part, and schedule contractors for the rest.

• Inspect the finished job against a written standard before you accept it.

• Hand over a home that is finished, not nearly finished. Speed matters; quality wins if they conflict.

Contractors

• Brief contractors on scope, hold them to the schedule, and inspect before you sign anything off.

• Tell your manager when a contractor is not meeting the standard.

• Sourcing, contracts and pricing are handled by our procurement team. You hold people to what was agreed.

Safety and emergencies

• Life safety first: detectors, extinguishers, exits, lighting, water intrusion.

• Carry the emergency phone and respond to after-hours calls.

• Handle severe weather, freezes and floods, including preparation before they arrive.

• Know what is never handled alone and call for help without hesitating.

• Keep the shop, tools, inventory and chemical storage tidy, stocked and safe.

› A normal day

• Check overnight calls and anything the emergency phone brought in.

• Quick catch-up with the Customer Service Agent on today's jobs and anything urgent.

• Work through the day's work orders, highest urgency first.

• Preventive maintenance tasks scheduled for that day.

• Check on any contractor working on site.

• Write up everything you did before you finish, and flag anything that needs your manager.

› What you need

• Several years of hands-on maintenance across more than one trade, in buildings people were living or staying in.

• Genuine diagnostic ability.

• The judgment to know what you should not attempt, and no ego about saying so.

• You are good with people in their homes and can explain a technical problem.

• You document your work. This job has a paperwork half and it is not optional.

• Comfortable using software, and willing to work in our systems rather than around them.

• A valid driver's license. The essential physical functions of this role include lifting and carrying tools, parts and equipment, climbing ladders and stairs, kneeling and working in confined spaces, and responding on foot to emergencies on site.

• Willing to live on site and carry the emergency phone.

› What helps, but we do not require it

• Hotel or resort engineering: maintenance engineer or engineering supervisor. This is the background we like most.

• Maintenance in extended-stay, serviced apartments, senior living, clubs or hospitals.

• Multifamily maintenance experience.

• Additional trade licenses or certifications.

• Spanish alongside English. Many residents at our Texas communities speak Spanish, so it helps.

› How we set your level and pay

We hire this role at three levels and the pay range covers all of them, which is why it is wide. Where you come in depends on what you can demonstrably do, assessed during hiring from your work and a practical skills conversation. Apply once; we will tell you which level we think fits and why.

Tech I . A solid foundation in at least one trade and around 2 years of hands-on maintenance in occupied buildings. You diagnose honestly, you know what you should not attempt, and you are good with people in their homes. You work with support on live resident issues until you have passed the first block of training, and we teach you the rest of the trades.

Tech II . Several years across more than one trade. You run your own work orders and the preventive maintenance calendar without supervision, diagnose across HVAC, plumbing, electrical and appliances, hold contractors to a standard, and document to the point where someone else can pick the job up from your notes.

Senior . You have effectively run a building on your own. You spot a big-ticket owner issue early and write it up well enough for a decision to be made on it, you set the standard the rest of us work to, and you are the person who stays calm at two in the morning.

Your level is reviewed at six months and then annually, against the same written criteria for everyone, and moving up a level is a pay change rather than only a title change.

› Training we give you

You cannot deal with residents unsupervised until you have passed the first block of training.

• The Upfrnt Standard and how we speak to residents.

• Fair housing and the rules around entry notice, habitability and retaliation. This has a pass mark and is retaken every year.

• How to put things right when they go wrong, and how much you can decide on your own.

• Safety, emergencies and duty of care.

• Upfrnt OS: the work order process, what the system decides, what you approve, and why workarounds cost us.

• Where our responsibility ends and the owner's begins, and how to talk to a resident about it.

• Contractor and make-ready standards, and how to inspect against them.

• A briefing on your specific community: its systems, access, safety layout, contractors and anything unusual about it.

› On call and living on site

You hold the community's emergency phone as a standing part of the role. Relief cover is arranged for vacation, sickness, family and medical leave, jury duty, military service, religious observance and any accommodation you need.

Holding the phone is not the same as being on duty. Outside your scheduled hours your time is your own: sleep, leave the property, make plans. What we ask is that you answer the phone and can be back on site within 30 minutes if something genuine happens. If you want to be properly unreachable — a trip, an evening out, anything — tell your manager and we put cover in place.

The phone is for genuine emergencies: water, fire, gas, no heat or cooling, lockouts and anything affecting safety or security. Everything else waits for the next working day, and you are not expected to answer it.

Holding the phone carries a standby payment of $100 per week whether or not you are called out. Overtime is paid for attending to emergencies after work hours.

The apartment is subsidized, and utilities and internet are excluded. It is provided under a separate occupancy agreement that runs alongside your employment, not under a standard resident lease.