General Manager

Hickory; Stratford (CT); On-site; USD 150,000 - 165,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health & Wellness

Vacation: 15 days

Holidays & Sick Days

401(k) match

Paid Family Leave

Growth & Development

Job summary

Hickory, through Pack-Timco, seeks a General Manager to own P&L, crews, dispatch, install and service, and to manage builder and architect relationships on-site in Stratford, CT. You will drive the Hickory operating rhythm and leverage AI to scale a nearly 60-year brand within a premium market.

You’ll lead with grit, adaptability, and a bias for fast, accurate decision-making, while growing people and processes to deliver exceptional client outcomes.

Qualifications

• Raw talent and grit: figure things out and press through tough challenges.
• 0-to-1 ability: built something from nothing, value scar tissue.
• Quiet confidence with low ego; able to be wrong humbly.
• Leadership, formal or informal, to motivate others through trust.
• Emotional intelligence and clear communication on paper and in person.
• Fast learner who adapts and updates with new evidence.
• Attention to detail and fast follow-through; avoid sloppiness.
• Willingness to push back when it matters under pressure.
• Understanding of the trades as a resilient, AI-enabled industry.
• You’ve run a trades/field-service business with full ownership and know what good looks like on a truck and a spreadsheet.
• Independent enough to run point, adaptable to new systems and cultures, and ambitious to grow.

Responsibilities

• Own Pack-Timco P&L, crews, dispatch, install and service, customer experience, and builder/architect relationships, on-site in Stratford.
• Implement the Hickory operating rhythm—Vision Blueprint, Living Playbook, Performance, Leadership, Drive—to drive growth and leverage AI across the business.
• Protect what makes the brand strong and promote the business by pushing decisions down and promoting from within.

Skills

Raw talent and grit

0-to-1 ability

Quiet confidence

Leadership

Emotional intelligence

Fast learner

Detail and follow-through

Disagree under pressure

Trades industry insight

Job description

About Hickory

Hickory partners with the industry's leading home service operators and transforms them with Hickory OS, our proprietary AI operating system. That combination has grown revenue more than 11x since 2017, making Hickory one of the largest regional home service operators in the country.

Hickory is not private equity. We don't buy to flip, and we don't manage for the exit. We're owner-operators building a company designed to last for generations. AI is the leverage; people are the moat. Roughly 350 strong, we invest in our people the way we invest in the business: deliberately.

Five values are the standard we hold each other to — they shape who we hire and who we promote: Put Employees First. Treat Everyone with Respect. Delight Customers. Raise the Bar. Get Sh*t Done.

About Pack-Timco

Pack-Timco has been Connecticut's design-build HVAC contractor since 1967 - heating, cooling, heat pumps, indoor air quality, and engineered comfort systems for some of the most thoughtfully built homes in the Northeast. Radiant and high-velocity systems, geothermal, wine cellar cooling, snowmelt: the work is technical, the standards are high, and clients notice the difference.

Based in Stratford and serving Fairfield County, CT and Westchester County, NY, Pack-Timco works shoulder-to-shoulder with architects, builders, and homeowners, and has held an A+ BBB accreditation since 1993. It's part of the Hickory family.

About the Role

As General Manager you own Pack-Timco: P&L, crews, dispatch, install and service, customer experience, and the builder and architect relationships that drive a large share of the work. On-site in Stratford, in the business, with the team.

This isn't a caretaker role. You'll install the Hickory operating rhythm - Vision Blueprint, Living Playbook, Performance, Leadership, Drive - that's driven ~70% organic gross-profit growth across our portfolio, and put Hickory OS to work on the parts of this business still running on institutional memory. Be sharp enough to earn credibility fast with a tenured crew, and open enough to change your mind when the market tells you something your playbook didn't.

Fairfield County is a premium market with premium expectations. You're inheriting a nearly 60-year brand with a loyal client base and a category of work most operators can't execute. The job is to protect what makes it good and take the ceiling off what it can do. Do that well and, as the platform grows, so does what we look to you for — we push decisions down, not up, and we promote from within.

Who We're Looking For

No "10+ years of X," no required degrees, no keyword bingo. We hire for who you are and what you can do. Failed founders and people who've tried something hard and come up short are welcome here; so are leaders who never had the title.

• Raw talent and grit. You're the one who figures it out, and you don't stop when it gets hard.
• 0-to-1 ability. You've built something from nothing. Success optional; scar tissue valued.
• Quiet confidence, no ego. Secure enough to be wrong, humble enough to do the unglamorous work.
• Leadership, formal or informal. You get people to want to do what must be done through trust, not org-chart authority.
• Emotional intelligence, and communication that's clear on the page and in the room. You listen more than you talk.
• Fast learner who changes their mind. You seek facts and update when the evidence says so.
• Detail and follow-through at speed. "Mostly done" isn't done. Fast doesn't mean you missed the key detail.
• Willing to disagree, steady under pressure. You push back when it matters, and you calm rooms rather than heat them up.
• You see what we see in the trades. An essential, AI-resilient industry full of skilled people and untapped potential.

For this role specifically:

• You've run a trades or field-service business, not just a piece of one. Full day-to-day ownership - P&L, crews, dispatch, customer experience - and you know what good looks like on a truck and on a spreadsheet.
• You can hold a premium standard. Pack-Timco's clients and trade partners expect precision, discretion, and follow-through. You've held a crew to craft, not just speed, without losing them.
• Independent enough to run point, adaptable enough to earn it. You operate without a playbook written for you, but you can bend to a system, a market, and a culture that's new to you.
• You want to keep climbing. This is a proving ground, not a landing spot.

Why Join Hickory

• Master the best transformation practice in the trades. New businesses onto the platform in under 30 days, then lifted by a proven system.
• Use AI leverage most operators only talk about. Integrating acquisitions in days, coaching calls as they happen, turning company data into each day's priorities.
• Level up, and level others up. Field tenure runs twice the industry average, with near-zero regretted attrition.
• Culture you feel walking in. Employee NPS of 44 against an industry average of 14.
• Own real calls from day one, backed by management training and AI education at every level.

Compensation

$150,000 - $165,000 base, plus a 25% discretionary bonus. Final offer depends on experience and scope.

• Health & Wellness: Medical, dental, and vision with a choice of plans. Hickory covers up to 95% of premiums on base plans; zero-deductible and HSA-eligible options available, including medical concierge services.
• Vacation: 15 days from day one, up to 5 unused days carried over each year.
• Holidays & Sick Days: 11 paid holidays including a floating day, plus 5 sick days annually that roll over (up to 10 usable in any year).
• 401(k): Automatic enrollment after 90 days; we match 50% of your contributions up to 7%.
• Paid Family Leave: Up to 12 weeks to bond with a new child or care for a family member.
• Growth & Development: Management training, AI education, and company-paid classes and seminars.

Hickory is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or veteran status.