Southern Lights of Raleigh is looking for a Service Manager: someone who knows lighting from the field and is ready to lead the people doing that work.

You’ve spent years working with lighting, whether on landscapes and gardens, at events, or on a stage. You know what it takes to make a system work and keep it working, and now you’re ready to use that knowledge to run crews and build something bigger.

Here, you take over our maintenance and repair department, run its schedule and its crews, and grow it from a single crew into a full department.

The ideal candidate brings:

• Hands-on lighting experience in landscape, architectural, event, or stage lighting, with enough low-voltage knowledge to find what a technician missed

• Experience leading or scheduling a field crew

• The ability to keep a busy schedule organized and rebuild it when the weather changes the plan

• An easy way with clients on the phone, including calling past clients to bring them back for service

• A real interest in growing a department and the people in it

If you’ve worked with lighting and you’re ready to lead and grow a team, we want to talk to you.

WHAT THE WORK LOOKS LIKE

For your first few months, you’ll spend a good share of your time on properties with our crews, learning how our systems are built and how the many fixture and transformer lines we carry get repaired. After that, most of your day runs from the office. You’ll build the schedule, dispatch the crews, and take calls from techs who want a second opinion. You’ll also work through a client list that goes back 30 years, calling people whose systems are due for attention. When a client asks for a few new lights during a service visit, you’ll handle it so the sales team can stay focused on larger projects. Weather moves the schedule constantly, and some weeks your crew helps the install team while other weeks they help yours. If your background is building or facilities maintenance without lighting or outdoor work, this role isn’t a fit.

WHO BELONGS HERE

• When rain wipes out a day’s schedule, you rebuild it and keep everyone working.

• Talking with people comes easily to you, so clients and crews always know where things stand.

• Your techs bring you the hard problems, and you’d rather teach them the fix than do it for them.

• If the install team is short-handed, sending your crew to help feels like the obvious call.

• Nobody has to hand you a to-do list, because you see what needs doing and get after it.

• Your success rises and falls with how Southern Lights does, and you like it that way.

PAY AND PATH

This role starts at a $75,000 base, with earning potential up to $110,000 as the maintenance book grows.

After six months, you’ll earn a quarterly bonus based on how quickly repairs close, how few need a second trip, and how much recurring maintenance work grows. Your base goes up as you add and train new crews, and the path leads to running the full maintenance division.

WHY WORK AT SOUTHERN LIGHTS

• Paid holidays, plus two weeks of paid vacation each year (the week of the Fourth of July and Christmas through New Year’s).

• A bonus tied to the growth of the maintenance team you build.

• Be part of the leadership team and build a department where you get to see the growth your work creates.

• An established client list of homeowners, custom builders, and landscape architects who already trust the work.

• A small team where everyone depends on everyone else, and people are appreciated for what they do.

• Flexible time off: give notice, and we’ll work with you when life comes up.

• Run the maintenance and repair schedule, dispatching crews and adjusting the plan when weather or emergencies change it

• Serve as the go-to resource for technicians on difficult diagnoses, and mentor them on repairs across the lighting lines we carry

• Reach out to past clients whose systems are due for maintenance and get them booked

• Handle small add-on requests from service clients so the sales team can focus on larger projects

• Grow the department from a single crew to multiple crews, including helping bring on and train new crew members

• Coordinate with the production manager to share crew members between maintenance and installation as the workload shifts

• Spend time in the field early on, learning Southern Lights’ systems, products, and repair methods

Required

• Hands-on experience in landscape, architectural, event, or stage lighting, or in low-voltage systems

• Working knowledge of low-voltage lighting, enough to diagnose problems a technician may miss

• Experience scheduling, dispatching, or leading field crews

• Comfort calling clients, including past clients, to book service

• Willingness to spend part of the first few months in the field learning systems and product lines

• Preferred: Spanish-speaking (a real plus with our crews)

Not Required

• An electrician’s license, since line-voltage work goes through our electrical subcontractor

• Landscape lighting experience specifically, since event, stage, and landscaping backgrounds all carry over

Southern Lights of Raleigh designs, installs, and maintains architectural and landscape lighting for homes and commercial properties across the Triangle, handling everything from the walls of the house outward. In 30 years in business, it has become one of the area’s leading landscape lighting companies, with work coming through custom builders, landscape architects, engineers, and interior designers.