Facilities Director, HVAC

Vixxo is seeking a full-time Facilities Director, HVAC in the Wichita, KS area.

About the role

Vixxo is pivoting how we deliver facilities services. Trade-specialized pods have proven to deliver higher performance, better unit economics, higher customer satisfaction, and stronger provider relationships. We see it today in the trades where we already specialize: Doors and Locks, Aquatics, Coffee and Espresso, Signs and Lighting.

The pod model is how we evolve as an AI-first company — not a traditional services company that adds AI on top. It is the operating spine for where Vixxo is going.

HVAC is the next major trade pod. The Facilities Director, HVAC runs that pod: a small team of trade-specialized AI-first operators, trade specialists, an embedded Service Provider Manager, an SME for trade depth, and project managers where volume demands it.

This role also requires close collaboration with the HVAC Projects team. HVAC reactive work, PM work, installs, replacements, and projects often move across operational boundaries. The HVAC Pod Leader will work with Operations and Project Team leaders to build the handoff and management transition when work moves from reactive execution to project-level execution.

This is a director-level role and a foundational hire for the future of Vixxo.

Who Will Thrive Here:

This is not the standard Vixxo operations director role. This is a new role. We are redefining what it means to operate natively with AI in the execution of facilities maintenance.

The person who thrives here is a Maverick — a disruptor who is comfortable with change, willing to throw out the old playbook and build a new one, and capable of leading a team through ambiguity without waiting for perfect information. This is a fail-forward environment. We will not get everything right out of the gate. We will learn fast, adapt quickly, and evolve continuously.

You might be:

• A strong operations or logistics leader who has built repeatable systems in a messy domain
• A marketplace or dispatch operator who has managed provider networks at scale
• A military operator or process leader who has learned new technical domains faster than the specialists around them
• Someone making a serious career pivot who has demonstrated the ability to acquire domain knowledge quickly and operate with conviction before the documentation is complete

What matters: you are not intimidated by ambiguity, you do not wait for perfect information, and you know how to lead a team, build tooling, and solve problems while the work is moving.

What You Will Own:

HVAC performance outcomes

The pod owns HVAC performance across all customers and all work types. Specifically:

• First-time fix rate — the right repair, executed correctly, the first time
• Callback reduction — pattern recognition and root cause discipline to eliminate recurring failures
• Time to complete and time to arrive — faster, more predictable execution
• PM completion rate — preventative maintenance executed on time and on scope
• Install and project execution partnership — clean handoffs, clear ownership, and effective co-management with the HVAC Projects team
• Customer satisfaction on HVAC — quality, responsiveness, comfort, uptime, and cost transparency
• Service provider NPS — the health of the SP relationship as a leading indicator of network strength

Margin and rate authority

The Pod Leader owns trade-level margin for HVAC across all accounts. This includes:

• Full authority to set and manage service provider rates for the HVAC network
• Ownership of the spread between SP cost and customer contract pricing, within established gross margin floors
• Rate-increase decisions for the HVAC SP network
• Build versus quote decisions and NTE compliance posture
• Repair versus replacement posture, in partnership with Project Team leaders when the work moves to install or project-level execution

Strategic sourcing is a lever the Pod Leader uses — for regional benchmarking, RFP execution, and creating competition in the supplier network. It is not a gate. Rate decisions are owned by the Pod Leader.

Action item: Leadership alignment needed on rate authority before posting. Jim owns the follow-up.

Service provider relationships

• The Pod Leader and their embedded SPM own the day-to-day SP relationship — trust, nurturing, accountability, and performance
• The Pod Leader collaborates with the HVAC Projects team to co-manage HVAC suppliers and service providers on HVAC installs, replacements, and projects
• The Pod Leader has full authority to pause or terminate work with an SP when it best serves the pod, coordinated with Project Team leaders when that SP is active on project-level work
• Recruitment and compliance support are shared services; relationship ownership lives in the pod
• SPs are not a commodity. They are a limited resource. The pod builds and protects these relationships.

Reactive-to-project handoff

HVAC work often starts as reactive service and becomes project-level work: replacement, retrofit, major repair, install, or scoped capital work. The Pod Leader owns the operating discipline that makes that transition clean.

The Pod Leader will work with Operations and Project Team leaders to define:

• When reactive HVAC work should move into project-level management
• What information must transfer from the reactive team to the project team
• Who owns customer communication, SP communication, scope, quote status, schedule, and execution once the transition happens
• How HVAC suppliers and service providers are co-managed when the same network supports both reactive work and project execution
• How AI agents and workflow tools detect handoff triggers and keep both teams aligned

Agent development and AI tooling

The Pod Leader builds and evolves the AI agents their pod needs to execute. They are not waiting for the technology team to build it for them. They collaborate with the tech team and other pod leaders to stay aligned on shared frameworks and share knowledge across pods — but they have the authority and the obligation to go build.

Existing agent infrastructure includes triage, quote generation, and communication cadence. The Pod Leader inherits this and evolves it continuously for HVAC-specific needs.

Examples of agents in operation or development:

• Triage agent: reads the incoming work ticket, pulls site history, equipment specs, previous calls, and helps the operator diagnose before dispatch — catching misclassifications, identifying recurring failures, routing to the right specialist
• Quote generation and SP submission with acceptance tracking
• Friendly status checks on open calls (ETA, parts, scheduling)
• Daily pod updates to account teams
• Escalation detection when SLA or priority thresholds trigger
• Reactive-to-project handoff detection when repair, replacement, install, or retrofit thresholds are met
• SP communication quality monitoring (Gong, Amazon Connect, email)
• Customer communication cadence by priority
• Internal workflow status threads on active issues

Team leadership

The Pod Leader leads:

• Trade-specialized AI-first operators
• Trade specialists (escalated, complex, sub-specialty work)
• An embedded Service Provider Manager (or a combination function performed by the trade-specialized operators — see SPM model below)
• A technical SME (see SME model below)
• Project managers when project volume warrants

The Pod Leader also works directly with HVAC Projects leaders and Project Team leaders on install and project execution where supplier/service provider management, scope transition, or execution ownership must be coordinated.

What We Are Looking For:

Required

• Leadership first. You have led multi-role teams in the operation and execution of high-value work. You set expectations, develop people, and hold a standard.
• Change agent. You are willing to throw out the old playbook when it no longer fits and evolve the organization with one that lets the business grow. You retain the knowledge that lets us execute. You do not reinvent for the sake of reinventing. You build and evolve.
• AI fluency. You work with AI agents and AI-assisted tools as a primary mode of operating. You build and evolve them. You do not wait for someone else to figure it out.
• Operating judgment. You run a queue, hold a cadence, escalate the right thing at the right time, and protect a customer relationship under pressure.
• Project partnership discipline. You know how to coordinate across operational boundaries without creating confusion about who owns the work.
• Fail-forward mindset. You learn fast, adapt quickly, and do not need perfect information to move.
• Relationship discipline. You build long-term SP and customer relationships through consistency and direct communication.
• Margin and rate stewardship. You treat margin and rate posture as part of the job, not a finance team handoff.
• Radical candor. Direct on the work. Warm with the person. Open to being challenged and challenges others.

Trade understanding

• Either understands the HVAC trade today, or has the curiosity and operating instincts to learn it on the job with AI agents and an SME partner
• Will learn the difference between reactive repair, major repair, replacement, install, PM, and project work quickly
• Understands the difference between reactive repairs, PM, and project work in a trade — and why all three must be coordinated through one trade operating model