Superintendent

Residential Construction Superintendent

Character Companies, Inc. Alexandria, VA $85,000 to $110,000 base plus profit share

Who We Are

Character Companies builds custom and spec homes from $1M to $3M on infill lots in Alexandria, Arlington, and Fairfax County, the kind of neighborhoods where the house going up next door has been there for eighty years and everybody on the street is watching. We run three defined product lines, Classic, Signature, and Legacy, so pricing and specs are settled before we break ground instead of getting negotiated at the client's expense halfway through framing. Every house is built to a written standard covering all nine phases, from footing depth and rebar placement to tight miters and consistent reveals in the trim. When something is wrong, we tear it out and do it again, because our name is on the front of the company and a family is going to live in that house for twenty years.

The Seat

You report to our General Manager and own the field on a focused set of active homes. That means what gets built, in what order, and to what standard. You are the person who makes sure the house that gets built is the house that was drawn, and that it gets delivered on time.

Day to Day

You start on site, not at a desk, walking every active job on the standard sequence: perimeter and E&S check, then in at the top floor and down through every room, with a hard look at what the last trade left behind. What you find gets logged in JobTread the same day with a photo, an owner, and a due date, and you chase it closed on your timeline instead of waiting for the sub to wander back through. Between walks you are looking two, four, and six weeks out: trades booked, long lead items landing on time, inspections scheduled, and nothing on the critical path quietly slipping. At every phase gate you inspect against our written standard before anything gets covered, and you stop the work when it does not meet it. You close the week by walking the GM through where each house sits against its schedule, what is coming, and what you are doing to protect an on time delivery.

What You Will Be Measured On

You get your scorecard on day one and we review it weekly. No mystery and no moving goalposts.

1. Site walks on the standard sequence, every job, every set day. Measured by walk completion rate, and defects caught at a phase gate instead of at punch. This is what keeps quality problems from ever reaching a client.

2. Same day logging in JobTread with a photo, an owner, and a due date. Measured by percent logged same day and percent closed by due date. Makes the field visible so we run on systems instead of heroics.

3. Phase gate inspections against the written standard before anything gets covered. Measured by gates signed off before cover, and open items at final walk. Work caught before drywall costs a fraction of the same work caught after. Direct margin protection.

4. Rolling two, four, and six week look ahead on every assigned home. Measured by milestone dates hit and days in construction against baseline. On time delivery is what the client is buying, and cycle time drives how many homes we turn.

5. Verifying work in place before it is paid and rejecting unauthorized field changes. Measured by rework dollars as a percent of job cost. Every dollar spent building something twice comes out of the margin that funds the next lot.

How We Decide If This Seat Is Right For You

We use GWC. Before we hire anyone, we ask whether they Get it, Want it, and have the Capacity to do it. All three have to be a yes, and we would rather find out now than six months in.

Get it. You can read a full plan set and find the conflict before it gets framed. You understand why sequencing exists and when it is safe to deviate. You know luxury tolerances are a different standard than production, and you can explain the difference in specifics.

Want it. You want to be in the field, and you want to stay there. This is a builder's seat, not a step toward a desk.

Capacity. You have the time to cover every job daily, the discipline to document the same day, and the spine to make a sub tear out and redo work without torching the relationship.

What We Believe

Three values run this company. They are not wall art. We hire against them, we review against them, and when someone does not fit them we deal with it.

Fail Forward. This business was not built on a handful of wins. It was built on a mountain of failures we learned from. When the framing is off you do not tear down the house, you adjust, course correct, and keep building. What we ask is that you own the mistake, solve your way back on track, and keep your head up while you do it. Nobody here gets punished for a problem they surfaced early. People do get held to what they did next.

Fuel the Vibe. Culture is not built in meetings. It is built in how you show up on a Tuesday morning when the job is behind and it is raining. Your attitude works like a level: if you are true and steady, the whole team builds straight, and if you are off, the whole project leans. We solve and we own. We do not complain, blame, or sit in the delay.

Figure It Out. Nobody handed us a playbook. Most people here walked into a seat with no system and built one. If you hit something you have never seen before, we expect you to think, get resourceful, and find the best possible outcome rather than handing the job back to somebody else. Figure It Out applies to obstacles, not to standards. The quality bar is written down and it does not move.

What Is In It For You

Pay. $85,000 to $110,000 base depending on experience, paid biweekly.

Profit share. You share in what the company earns, so when the homes you run come in on schedule and on budget, you feel it.

Retirement. 401(k).

Insurance. Medical, dental, vision, and life, eligible the first of the month after 60 days.

Time off. 120 hours of PTO, which is 15 days, front loaded January 1 and available after 90 days. Plus 9 paid holidays, 3 floating holidays, 6 sick days, and bereavement and parental leave.

Vehicle and equipment. Monthly vehicle stipend, plus phone and tablet or laptop.

Geography. Every job is in Alexandria and South Arlington. No two hour days spent driving between sites.

The part most builders will not give you. A written quality standard for all nine phases, so you never guess what the bar is. A scorecard on day one, so you always know where you stand. And leadership that backs you when you tell a sub to tear it out.

Career Growth

We are growing, which means new seats open up regularly and we fill them from the inside whenever we can. You get monthly coaching, Quarterly Conversations, and honest feedback fast enough to actually act on it, because nobody should find out at their annual review that something has been off for six months. Do this job well and the next step, whether that is more homes, a lead superintendent seat, or developing supers under you, is a real conversation and not a someday.

This Is Probably Not For You If

• You want to be behind a desk within a year.
• You address quality issues when the sub happens to be on site rather than when you find them.
• You think documentation is busywork.
• You need someone to tell you what to do about a problem. We expect problems to arrive with a recommendation attached.

How to Apply

Send your resume to [EMAIL]. In the body of the email, not a cover letter, answer this in a few sentences:

Tell us about a job where the quality wasn't where it needed to be. What did you find, when did you find it, and what did you do about it?

We read every one of these.

Character Companies, Inc. is an equal opportunity employer.