Maintenance & Repair Operations Manager — Landscape Lighting

Southern Lights of Raleigh is looking for a Maintenance and Repair Operations Manager: someone who can find why a lighting system failed on the property, then run the schedule and the crews that keep every repair moving until it’s closed.

To be considered, you bring all of this:

• Hands-on low-voltage troubleshooting — you’ve found the failure yourself, on site, in landscape lighting, irrigation, security, AV, or a similar system

• 120-volt judgment — you can troubleshoot power, and you know when the job needs a licensed electrician

• You’ve run a field schedule — you’ve built the week for a service crew or route, and you kept it in the system instead of your head

• Follow-through on open repairs — back-ordered parts, warranty returns, and distributors who don’t call back stay on your list until the job is closed

• You’re good with homeowners — when a date moves, you pick up the phone, and the client stays with us

• You share people well — you’ve traded crew members with another manager without turning it into a turf fight

Southern Lights of Raleigh designs, installs, and maintains landscape lighting across the Triangle. For thirty years, we’ve lit the properties where it has to be right. Landscape architects and custom builders hand us their clients; we build to code with copper, brass, and bronze bought direct from the manufacturer, and we stay on those properties for years after the install.

Clients name our maintenance and repair techs in their reviews, and they bring up on their own that a person answers the phone here. That side of the business has outgrown how we run it. We’re hiring the person who builds it into its own division and runs it as an equal to our production manager, one crew at a time, without letting the standard slide.

WHAT THE WORK ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE

This job is half field and half office, and the division it runs isn’t built yet. Know what you’re signing up for:

• The system is half-built — part of the repair schedule lives in Housecall Pro, and part of it lives in people’s heads. Getting all of it into the system, and keeping it there, is yours.

• You’ll be on the ground — kneeling in mulch with a meter, tracing a wire a landscaper cut under a hedge, in a Raleigh August.

• Repairs stall, and they stay yours — parts go on back order, and distributors go quiet. You call on day two and again on day four, and the ticket doesn’t close until the repair does.

• You’re the voice clients hear — when a date moves or a repair goes sideways, you make the call. The people who own these homes expect to talk to a person.

• You share your people — some weeks your best tech is on an install crew because you sent him there. At holiday season, everybody is on a pole hanging lights, managers included.

• The slow months are your problem — the winter stretch between installs is the reason this division exists. Filling it with maintenance work is the job.

If that reads like a mess you’d rather not inherit, this isn’t your job, and that’s fine. If it reads like a mess you already know how to fix, keep going.

WHO BELONGS HERE

Do it right or don’t do it means you pick the lamp for the color temperature and beam spread the property actually needs, and you hold a repair to NEC whether the homeowner is watching or not.

Pick up the phone means you call the client, the distributor, and the designer. An email is a message sent. A call is a problem solved.

See it and handle it means you don’t wait for an assignment. If a truck is short on fixtures for tomorrow, it’s stocked before you go home.

Nobody’s above the work means the title doesn’t get you out of the hard days. When the job wears everybody out, the people with the most experience are in it.

Three strokes and a poke means you correct people when they get it wrong and catch them doing it right three times as often. Nobody here works for somebody who can only find fault.

You have to be able to work with this team, which means good hands don’t cover for being territorial. The install crews and the maintenance crews are one bench, and you treat them that way.

WHAT YOU NEED

Everything in the list at the top, plus:

• Valid driver’s license, clean driving record, and reliable transportation.

• Comfort working in field service software. We run on Housecall Pro.

• Ability to pass a background check and authorization to work in the United States.

• Full-time availability.

You do NOT need:

• Landscape lighting experience specifically. Irrigation, low-voltage, and electrical service backgrounds carry over, and we’ll teach you our product lines.

• An electrician’s license. We bring one in for the work that needs it.

• A college degree.

PAY & PATH

Starting pay: $75,000 base.

Earning potential: up to $110,000 as the maintenance book grows.

After the first six months, a quarterly bonus switches on, paid on how fast repairs close, how few of them need a second trip, and how much the recurring maintenance book grows. As you staff and train new maintenance crews, the base moves with them. The path runs toward leading the whole maintenance division as one of the managers who runs this company day to day.

WHY SOUTHERN LIGHTS

• You’d be building a division, starting with the first crew, instead of maintaining somebody else’s.

• You run it as the production manager’s equal, with your own side of the business and a shared bench of people.

• The properties are the ones architects and custom builders send us. The hardware is copper, brass, and bronze bought straight from the manufacturer.

• The owner is stepping back on purpose. Decisions get made by the people who are here every day.

• Managers here catch people doing it right. That’s a rule, and it applies to how you’ll be managed too.

• Own the maintenance and repair schedule in Housecall Pro, and be the person clients talk to when a date moves or a repair goes sideways.

• Diagnose and fix low-voltage lighting failures on site, troubleshoot 120-volt power, and bring in a licensed electrician when the job needs one.

• Keep every repair on your list until it’s marked complete, including back-ordered parts and distributors who haven’t called back, with findings and materials logged so anyone can pull up a property’s history.

• Order repair materials, handle warranty returns, and keep maintenance inventory and trucks stocked so repair purchasing runs through one person.

• Staff new maintenance crews by pairing new hires with experienced techs, then train and inspect until every crew leaves a property looking like nobody came.

• Work hand in hand with the production manager, moving people between install and maintenance in both directions as the schedule calls for it.

• Grow the recurring maintenance book one crew at a time, so the slow winter stretch between installs is covered by maintenance work.

Required:

• Hands-on low-voltage troubleshooting in the field (landscape lighting, irrigation, security, AV, or similar).

• Experience scheduling a field crew or service route, or leading the people on one.

• Comfort troubleshooting 120-volt power and knowing when to call a licensed electrician.

• Valid driver’s license, clean driving record, reliable transportation.

• Comfort with field service software (we use Housecall Pro).

• Able to pass a background check; authorized to work in the U.S.; available full-time.

You do NOT need:

• Landscape lighting experience specifically. We’ll teach you our product lines.

• An electrician’s license.

• A college degree.

Southern Lights of Raleigh has spent thirty years designing, installing, and taking care of landscape lighting on the Triangle properties where it has to be right. Landscape architects and custom builders hand us their clients because they know what comes back: lighting designed to the architecture, built to code with copper, brass, and bronze, and still maintained ten years later. Clients call us because a person answers. We’re growing maintenance into its own division, and the people who build it will run it.