Head of Operations

HEAD OF OPERATION

• Salary/Pay Rate: $150,000 - $260,000 per year (plus profit sharing)
• Location: Irvine, California
• Job/Employment Type: Full Time
• Project Scope: Residential (Luxury Residential Design-Build)

Overview

BuilderWell is an established, profitable luxury residential design-build company with nearly a decade of proven success in Southern California.

We already have the licenses, reputation, team, marketing infrastructure, project history, and financial foundation. We are not starting from zero—and we are not looking for incremental improvement. Our goal is to 10X BuilderWell and build Southern California’s premier luxury residential design-build company. To accomplish that, we need a Head of Operation who is more than an executive. We need a high-level operator who can build the machine, lead the people, protect the profit, enforce accountability, and turn the founder’s vision into measurable results.

The founder is a visionary, relationship-builder, and high-level salesperson. Your role is to take full ownership of execution and build a company that performs without depending on the founder’s daily involvement. You will have real authority, real accountability, and meaningful financial upside. You will be expected to recruit, hire, develop, manage, and—when necessary—fire people based on performance.

If you have already scaled a successful residential construction or design-build company, this is your opportunity to do it again—with direct access to the founder, significant decision-making authority, and the resources to build something exceptional.

YOUR MISSION

Transform BuilderWell from a successful founder-led company into a professionally managed, highly profitable, scalable luxury design-build organization capable of becoming 10 times its current size.

Your job is to:

• Put the right people in the right seats.
• Remove the wrong people quickly and professionally.
• Build a leadership team that owns outcomes without constant supervision.
• Install companywide systems, scorecards, and accountability.
• Improve sales conversion and pipeline predictability.
• Protect and increase gross margin and net profit.
• Ensure projects finish on time, on budget, and at an exceptional standard.
• Deliver a consistent white-glove experience to every client.
• Remove the founder from day-to-day operations.
• Build a company that is scalable, valuable, and eventually sellable.
• You will not be measured by how many meetings you attend, how many hours you work, or how busy you appear.
• You will be measured by results.

WHAT YOU WILL OWN

1. COMPANYWIDE OPERATIONS

You will assume responsibility for BuilderWell’s day-to-day operations and convert the founder’s vision into priorities, operating plans, and measurable results.

You will:

• Lead all major departments, including sales, estimating, preconstruction, design coordination, project management, field operations, finance, and administration.
• Establish clear ownership, expectations, and accountability across the company.
• Build an operating system that connects every department.
• Identify bottlenecks and solve their root causes.
• Create repeatable processes that reduce dependence on individual employees.
• Establish weekly executive meetings, scorecards, priorities, and accountability.
• Ensure leadership decisions are implemented—not merely discussed.
• Make decisions without waiting for the founder to solve routine problems.
• Build a company that can grow rapidly without creating chaos.

2. PEOPLE, HIRING AND ACCOUNTABILITY

You will evaluate the current organization and build the leadership team required to 10X the company.

You will:

• Assess every existing employee objectively.
• Determine who should be developed, repositioned, replaced, or removed.
• Identify missing leadership positions and organizational gaps.
• Recruit, interview, hire, onboard, and retain high-performing leaders.
• Establish measurable outcomes and scorecards for every position.
• Conduct direct and consistent performance conversations.
• Coach employees who demonstrate the ability and willingness to improve.
• Remove employees who repeatedly fail to meet expectations.
• Develop future leaders and create succession plans.
• Build a culture where commitments matter.
• Eliminate politics, excuses, entitlement, and tolerated underperformance.
• Reward people who take ownership and produce results.
• You must be comfortable making difficult personnel decisions.
• If you avoid confrontation, tolerate repeated underperformance, or keep the wrong people because removing them feels uncomfortable, this position is not for you.

3. FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE

You will own the company’s financial performance—not simply revenue growth.

You will:

• Take full responsibility for the company’s operating P&L.
• Build and manage budgets, forecasts, cash-flow projections, and departmental plans.
• Protect and improve gross margin and net profit.
• Establish reliable financial dashboards and reporting.
• Review job costing, purchasing, labor productivity, change orders, collections, and overhead.
• Identify margin leakage before it becomes a completed-project loss.
• Hold managers accountable for their budgets and financial commitments.
• Improve contract structures, billing schedules, collections, and cash-flow predictability.
• Ensure growth produces profit and cash—not just more volume, employees, and complexity.
• Work with accounting and ownership to strengthen financial controls.
• Build the reporting discipline required for a future sale or investment event.

4. PROJECT DELIVERY

BuilderWell operates in luxury residential construction, where details, communication, planning, and execution matter.

You will:

• Establish a disciplined process from signed contract through design, preconstruction, construction, closeout, and warranty.
• Ensure plans, specifications, selections, budgets, scopes, and schedules are complete before work begins.
• Improve estimating accuracy and eliminate preventable handoff failures.
• Ensure every project has current plans, documentation, schedules, budgets, and assigned accountability.
• Enforce quality-control, safety, documentation, and site-management standards.
• Hold project managers accountable for schedule, budget, communication, quality, and client satisfaction.
• Create early-warning systems for delays, cost overruns, subcontractor problems, and client concerns.
• Conduct high-level project reviews and intervene before problems become emergencies.
• Improve trade-partner recruitment, pricing, performance, and accountability.
• Reduce rework, warranty claims, missed inspections, scheduling failures, and preventable mistakes.
• Ensure BuilderWell consistently delivers a white-glove luxury experience.

5. SALES, MARKETING AND GROWTH

The founder will continue to add value through luxury-client relationships, strategic partnerships, brand development, and major sales opportunities. Your responsibility is to build the system around that activity so sales become predictable, measurable, and profitable.

You will:

• Establish clear ownership from lead intake through signed contract.
• Improve speed-to-lead, qualification, follow-up, estimating, proposal delivery, and closing.
• Build a disciplined CRM and pipeline-management process.
• Track performance by lead source, salesperson, project type, market, contract value, and profitability.
• Establish accurate forecasts for sales, backlog, cash flow, and production capacity.
• Hold salespeople accountable for activity, follow-up, conversion, and collected revenue.
• Ensure marketing investments produce measurable opportunities and returns.
• Recruit, train, manage, and replace salespeople based on performance.
• Improve the handoff from sales to design, estimating, preconstruction, and production.
• Prevent the company from accepting unprofitable, high-risk, or operationally unsuitable projects.
• Expand BuilderWell’s presence in Orange County, Newport Beach, Corona del Mar, and other high-value Southern California markets.
• Help position BuilderWell as the premier white-glove luxury design-build concierge.

6. SYSTEMS AND SCALE

We are not hiring you to personally carry the entire company. We are hiring you to build a company that performs through people, systems, data, and accountability.

You will:

• Document and standardize critical company processes.
• Implement practical systems that employees actually use.
• Build dashboards that expose problems early.
• Establish clear decision rights and approval limits.
• Create consistent workflows across sales, design, estimating, production, finance, and client service.
• Eliminate dependence on tribal knowledge and individual memory.
• Select and implement technology that improves visibility and execution.
• Create training and onboarding systems for new employees.
• Build a scalable organizational structure for 10X growth.
• Ensure growth does not compromise quality, profitability, or client experience.

7. FOUNDER TRANSITION

A primary outcome of this position is removing the founder as BuilderWell’s operational bottleneck.

You will:

• Take ownership of daily decisions, personnel issues, project escalations, and departmental accountability.
• Establish clear decision-making authority throughout the company.
• Stop unnecessary problems from reaching the founder.
• Challenge the founder respectfully when ideas conflict with priorities, capacity, or profitability.
• Convert the founder’s ideas into clear execution plans.
• Keep the founder informed without requiring him to manage the details.
• Use the founder where he creates the greatest value: vision, relationships, strategic partnerships, brand, and major sales.
• Progressively transition the founder from daily operations to weekly strategic oversight, then monthly and ultimately quarterly involvement.
• The goal is not to make the founder less valuable.
• The goal is to focus him exclusively on the areas where he creates the most value.

FIRST-YEAR OUTCOMES

WITHIN YOUR FIRST 30 DAYS

You will:

• Complete a full assessment of the team, finances, projects, pipeline, systems, and organizational structure.
• Identify the most urgent risks, bottlenecks, and opportunities.
• Meet with every key team member and evaluate their performance and capabilities.
• Establish a weekly executive operating meeting.
• Implement an initial company scorecard.
• Clarify immediate responsibilities and decision-making authority.
• Present a written 90-day operating plan to the founder.

WITHIN YOUR FIRST 90 DAYS

You will:

• Implement a clear organizational chart with defined accountability.
• Make necessary personnel and leadership changes.
• Establish financial, sales, project, and operational dashboards.
• Create consistent accountability around budgets, schedules, sales follow-up, collections, and client communication.
• Establish measurable scorecards for every key role.
• Address the company’s highest-risk projects and operational failures.
• Reduce the number of routine issues reaching the founder.
• Present a credible plan for 10X growth.

WITHIN YOUR FIRST 12 MONTHS

You will:

• Build a leadership team capable of running daily operations.
• Establish predictable financial, sales, cash-flow, and project reporting.
• Improve sales conversion and pipeline accountability.
• Improve project budget and schedule performance.
• Increase gross profit, net profit, and cash-flow predictability.
• Reduce preventable errors, rework, warranty issues, and client escalations.
• Install repeatable systems across every major department.
• Create a performance-driven culture.
• Remove the founder from the majority of operational decisions.
• Build the infrastructure required to scale BuilderWell to 10 times its current size.
• Increase the company’s long-term enterprise value and readiness for a future sale.

YOUR SCORECARD

Your performance will be measured against clearly defined results, including:

• Profitable revenue growth
• Gross margin
• Net operating profit
• Cash flow and collections
• Backlog quality and profitability
• Sales conversion rate
• Lead response and follow-up performance
• Estimate and proposal turnaround time
• Project budget variance
• Project schedule variance
• Change-order documentation and collection
• Client satisfaction
• Referrals and repeat business
• Warranty and rework costs
• Employee performance
• Retention of high performers
• Removal of chronic underperformers
• Successful hiring of key leadership positions
• Adoption of company systems
• Completion of quarterly priorities
• Reduction in founder involvement
• Progress toward 10X growth
• Final targets will be established after reviewing BuilderWell’s baseline performance and approving the first-year operating plan.

THE PERSON WE ARE LOOKING FOR

You are a proven operator - not someone hoping this position will teach you how to become one.

The ideal candidate:

• Must have a minimum of 5+ years of executive management experience in luxury homebuilding, residential construction, or design-build.
• Has significant executive leadership experience in residential construction, custom homebuilding, luxury remodeling, or design-build.
• Has already helped scale a construction company through a major stage of growth.
• Can prove previous results with real numbers.
• Has held full P&L responsibility.
• Has led project management, estimating, preconstruction, sales, finance, and administrative teams.
• Understands job costing, gross-margin management, cash flow, contracts, schedules, change orders, and construction risk.
• Knows how to recruit and build a high-performing leadership team.
• Is comfortable hiring and firing based on performance.
• Has personally rebuilt underperforming teams or departments.
• Creates systems people actually use.
• Balances speed with discipline.
• Communicates directly and handles conflict professionally.
• Makes difficult decisions without unnecessary delay.
• Has excellent judgment under pressure.
• Thinks like an owner and takes complete responsibility for outcomes.
• Can earn the trust of employees, clients, subcontractors, and strategic partners.
• Understands the expectations of affluent luxury homeowners.
• Is highly organized without becoming bureaucratic.
• Can challenge the founder respectfully.
• Can turn ideas into priorities, plans, deadlines, and results.
• Wants to build something meaningful—not simply maintain what already exists.
• Experience scaling a founder-led construction company is strongly preferred.
• Contractors B License preferred

YOU ARE NOT A FIT IF

• You have never operated inside residential construction.
• Your experience comes exclusively from large corporations with extensive support departments.
• You need perfect systems before you can produce results.
• You expect the founder to make routine decisions for you.
• You avoid conflict or difficult personnel decisions.
• You tolerate missed commitments without consequences.
• You confuse meetings, presentations, and reports with execution.
• You blame the market, clients, employees, or ownership when results fall short.
• You are a consultant who recommends changes but does not personally implement them.
• You require perfect information before taking action.
• You build unnecessary bureaucracy.
• You want the Head of Operation title without Head of Operation-level responsibility.
• You cannot provide measurable examples of teams, margins, operations, or companies you have improved.
• You are looking for a comfortable maintenance role.
• We are not looking for someone to protect the status quo. We are looking for someone capable of building what comes next.

COMPENSATION

• Competitive executive base salary based on proven experience and results
• Significant performance-based annual incentive
• Long-term profit-sharing or performance-based upside may be available after demonstrated success
• Benefits and additional executive incentives will be discussed with qualified finalists
• This is a results-based executive opportunity.
• Exceptional performance will be rewarded accordingly, but long-term upside must be earned through measurable results.
• Equity will not be offered simply for accepting the position.

WHY BUILDERWELL?

Most executive positions ask you to manage someone else’s established machine. This position gives you the authority to build the machine.

You will inherit a profitable company with:

• Nearly a decade of operating history
• An established Southern California reputation
• Active projects and meaningful market demand
• A proven luxury design-build offering
• Strong marketing investment
• An existing team and operational foundation
• Direct access to the founder
• Significant room for expansion
• The financial capacity to invest in the right people and systems
• A clear objective to 10X the organization
• There are no layers of corporate politics standing between you and execution.
• If you produce results, you will have authority, recognition, and meaningful financial upside.
• This is an opportunity to take a successful company and turn it into a dominant, professionally managed, highly valuable organization.