General Manager of Service Operations

A large, well-capitalized equipment and power systems organization is hiring a General Manager of Service to lead its divisional service business. This is a true operating seat, not a caretaker role. You will own the service P&L, the shop and field service teams behind it, and the customer relationships that keep critical operations running.

The division is growing on the back of data center construction, healthcare and municipal infrastructure, energy demand, and an installed base that keeps expanding. The company needs a leader who can scale the service organization to match it — someone who can build technician capacity, tighten operational discipline, and turn a busy department into a predictably profitable one.

What You'll Own

• P&L ownership. Full accountability for service revenue, gross margin, and departmental profitability — you build the budget, you defend it, you hit it.
• Team leadership. Recruiting, developing, and retaining technicians and front-line supervisors in one of the tightest labor markets in the industry. Building a bench and a career path is a core part of the job, not a side project.
• Operational performance. Technician utilization and billable efficiency, work-in-process aging, work order quality, warranty claim recovery, and parts-and-service attachment. You'll be expected to know your numbers cold and act on them.
• Service execution. Scheduling and dispatch across shop and field, planned maintenance contracts, startups and commissioning, load bank testing, major overhauls, and 24/7 emergency response coverage.
• Customer ownership. You are the senior service voice with major accounts — escalations, service agreements, uptime commitments, and the relationships that grow the contract base.
• Safety. Owning and reinforcing a genuine safety-first culture across shop floors, customer sites, and field operations.
• Growth and strategy. Capacity planning, tooling and facility investment, process improvement, and partnering with sales and parts leadership to grow the aftermarket business.

What Success Looks Like

In the first year, you're expected to have a firm grip on the numbers and the team: utilization and efficiency trending up, WIP aging under control, warranty recovery clean, turnover down, and a clear plan for adding technician capacity. Beyond that, the mandate is growth — expanding the maintenance agreement base, improving response times, and building a service organization that the sales side can sell against with confidence.

Requirements

• This role is open to strong service leaders from across the equipment world. You do not need to have spent your career in generators.
• If you've run a service department or service P&L in heavy construction equipment, material handling and forklift, agricultural equipment, mining, on-highway truck and diesel, compression, rental, or industrial engine distribution, you should be on this list. The leadership mechanics — technician utilization, WIP discipline, warranty recovery, dispatch, retention, customer escalation, budget ownership — transfer directly. Product-specific power systems knowledge can be learned by a leader who already knows how to run the operation; the reverse is much harder.

What we're looking for:

• Seven or more years in equipment or industrial service, with at least three to five leading teams — service manager, shop manager, operations manager, or general manager level.
• Demonstrated P&L or budget accountability for a service department or branch, with real numbers you can speak to.
• A track record of hiring, developing, and keeping technicians — this is the single hardest part of the job and the thing that will be tested hardest in interviews.
• Strong command of service operations metrics and the systems behind them (dealer business systems, service management platforms, dispatch and scheduling tools).
• Technical credibility with a shop floor. You don't need to be the best diagnostician in the building, but technicians need to respect your judgment.
• Comfort in front of customers during a failure, an escalation, or a contract negotiation.
• Bachelor's degree or equivalent trade, technical, and leadership experience — both paths are welcome here.
• Helpful but not required: exposure to generator sets, switchgear, automatic transfer switches, EPG or engine service, prime and standby power applications, or critical-facility customers such as data centers and hospitals.