Operations Manager

Project Manager or Operations/General Manager experienced required . Company Description Tactical Wildlife Control is a family-owned, humane-first wildlife removal, exclusion, and pest control company serving Lake Zurich and the northwest Chicago suburbs. No call centers or AI answering services — real people producing the highest quality exclusion and wildlife work in Northern Illinois & Wisconsin. Our construction and restoration background means we don't just remove the animal, we fix the hole it came through. We're growing, and we're looking for a leader and problem solver who can run the field, keep crews moving, and make the calls that keep jobs on track. Role Description This is an in-field Operations Manager role — not a desk job with a title. You'll be out on jobs, running crews, and making real-time calls on scope, materials, and quality, working hand-in-hand with the owner and office admin to keep the business scaling without the wheels coming off. For the first year, you're in the field full-time: overseeing technicians, managing projects and material logistics, upholding our standards on-site, and learning our systems and our way of doing this work — because "operations manager" only means something once you've actually run the operation. This is a hands-on role — you're producing work alongside the crew, not watching from the truck. The goal by year one is that you've built and trained a lead tech capable of running day-to-day fieldwork, at which point your role shifts to true Operations Manager — overseeing multiple trucks, projects, and materials from a step back, rather than running point on every job yourself. You'll be compensated to care about the business succeeding, not just showing up: revenue-based bonuses, labor-efficiency bonuses, and real growth potential for the right person. Qualifications Real experience in wildlife control, pest management, or a closely related trade — you should already know your way around a trap, a crawlspace, and a customer's nerves. We're not training someone from zero; we're training someone on our way of doing things. Proven ability to run field crews: assign work, hold people accountable, coach technique, and keep quality high without babysitting. Comfortable owning material logistics and job-site decision-making in real time — you're the one making the call on-site, not waiting for a callback. Strong communicator — with technicians, with customers, and with ownership. You'll be a bridge between the field and the office. Organized enough to track job completion, documentation, and costs without needing a system built for you. Genuinely humane-first, compliance-minded approach to wildlife work — this isn't a "spray and pray" outfit. Willing to be in the field, full-time, for a year, with the explicit goal of working yourself into a management seat by training your own replacement. Construction, exclusion, or structural repair experience is a strong plus given our repair-first model. #J-18808-Ljbffr