Operations Manager

Operations Manager
Full-time Remote (Mexico or Argentina) Reports to the owner

About us
American Fire Stop is a specialty firestop contractor in the San Francisco Bay Area. We work for electrical and
plumbing contractors and sometimes directly for general contractors mostly on multi-family construction.
Our work arrives as a high volume of small jobs spread across a lot of sites. That shapes everything about how
we operate: our crews are usually working without a supervisor standing next to them and our margins live
or die on whether a job section takes the hours we budgeted for it.
We are a small practical company that has grown past the point where one person can hold it all in his head.
The owner runs American Fire Stop and also carries a separate account base as a commission sales
representative for a construction supply distributor selling to many of the same contractors we work for. Real
momentum not enough structure yet.

About the role
We are hiring an Operations Manager to own one question: did the work actually get done on budget and
can we see it in the numbers
Over the past few months we have built the bones of a production system. Slack for tracking an automated
feed of production data into a working spreadsheet QuickBooks Time for hours and every job divided into
sections with a budget of hours attached to each one. The outline is sound. What is missing is a person who
owns it runs it every day and closes the loop.
That is this job. It is not a strategy role and it is not a sales role. It is the job of making sure what we planned
on Monday is still true on Friday and that when it is not somebody knew before the customer did.

What you will own
Production accountability
Run the daily production system: Slack tracking the production spreadsheet QuickBooks Time and the
job-section hour budgets.
Compare actual hours against budgeted hours for every job section every week and know why the
variances happened.
Verify completion rather than take someones word for it. Build and enforce whatever confirmation step
makes that real whether that is photos checklists or sign-offs.
Surface problems to the owner before a customer surfaces them to him. No surprises is a performance
standard here not a hope.
Escalate people issues with the data attached. You bring the facts; the owner has the conversation.

Reporting and financial oversight
Deliver a 15-minute standup with the owner every morning and a short written brief.
Own weekly production reporting and monthly job costing: per-job margin labor efficiency and where
money is leaking.
Review the P&L and balance sheet monthly for accuracy and detail. Our administrative assistant produces
them and will continue to. You are accountable for them being right and for bringing options when they
are not.
Build the per-job margin picture properly. The owner has a good instinct for it today. We want it on a
page.

Process
Turn the outline we have built into a documented repeatable system that runs without heroics.
Write it down well enough that someone else could take it over because eventually someone will.
Improve it. You will find things we do that make no sense. Say so and fix them.

What this role is not
You are not selling. You are not delivering discipline to field employees. You are not taking the books away
from our administrative assistant. You are not managing the owners calendar which belongs to a separate
role we are hiring at the same time.

What we are looking for
Three or more years running operations production or project coordination. Construction field services
trades logistics or manufacturing is a real advantage but a strong generalist who likes numbers and
finishing things will beat a mediocre construction person.
Genuinely comfortable with spreadsheets and with hours-against-budget analysis. You are not our
bookkeeper but you are numerate and a P&L does not frighten you.
Fluent professional English written and spoken. Spanish is a significant advantage as most of our field
crew speaks Spanish.
Willing to tell a business owner his schedule is unrealistic to his face on day thirty.
Someone whose satisfaction comes from closing loops and being the reason nothing slipped.

The one thing we are strict about
If you cannot do something or you do not know how say so immediately.
The pattern that ends employment here is silent failure. Being asked to sort something out disappearing for
three weeks saying yes working on it and then revealing you never got anywhere. That is the one thing we
will not work through.
What we want instead every time: Here is what I am going to start with and I will report back Thursday.
Then on Thursday: I could not get anywhere with the first two. Here are three other options and what I
would do. Not knowing is fine. Getting stuck is fine. Going quiet is not.

Working with the owner
You will report directly to the owner and speak with him every day. He is warm direct and holds very high
standards. He is energized by teaching and by solving technical problems on job sites. He is also the first to
say that sitting down to verify that work got done is not how he is built which is exactly why this role exists.
He has asked for two things specifically: a 15-minute standup each morning with a short written brief and
honest feedback when his own plan does not hold up. Both are genuinely wanted. Someone who softens the
message to keep things comfortable will not do well here.

Compensation
2200 USD per month base plus merit pay of up to roughly 800 USD per month. We would rather tie pay to
the value delivered than pay a flat rate and hope.
Merit pay is earned on:
Job sections completed at or under their budgeted hours.
The daily brief delivered on time five days a week.
Weekly reporting accurate enough that it does not have to be restated.
No missed deadlines or inspections caused by a coordination failure.
No surprises: nothing the owner learns from a customer that you knew about first.
Merit pay is not paid in any month with incomplete or unexplained time records. We hold production
numbers and timekeeping to the same standard and we will not pay a bonus earned by cutting a corner on
either.
Reviewed after 90 days and annually.

Location and hours
Fully remote. We have a preference for Mexico because the time-zone overlap with our operating day is close
to complete and we will consider Argentina for the right person. Your working hours need to overlap
substantially with 7:00am to 4:00pm Pacific time.

Growth

This role is the bridge between a company the owner holds together personally and a company that runs on
process. There is real room to grow into broader operations leadership.
We will be straight about the likeliest shape of that: this person builds the system and over time helps hand
day-to-day management to someone internal. If a guaranteed executive title in two years is what you want
this is not that job. If being the person who built the machine appeals to you it is exactly that job.