Air Conditioning/Refrigeration Technical Services Manager

Air Conditioning & Refrigeration Technical Services Manager

If you’re a Senior Refrigeration or Air Conditioning Engineer who’s done years on the road — the traffic, the wear and tear on your hands, the unpredictable finish times — this is the role that gets you off the tools and home for dinner, without losing the seniority your experience has earned you.

Urban Cooling Ltd is an ambitious, fast-growing residential air conditioning installer. Every completed installation feeds into our maintenance department — and as we scale, that function needs senior technical depth it doesn’t currently have. This role owns the technical and operational judgment behind every service and maintenance job — diagnosing issues, reviewing engineer reports, deciding on parts and next steps, and being the answer when the team hits something they can’t resolve themselves. Day-to-day booking and logging of calls is handled by our admin team; this role is what happens after the call is booked.

You’ll oversee and direct the work of our field-based service engineers — allocating jobs, setting priorities, and holding the team accountable for the standard and pace of their work. This is a position of real authority, not just technical advice from the sidelines.

You’ll be based at our premises, not on the road. We finish at 4.30pm.

Initial phase (target: c. 2 months): you’ll work closely with the Commercial Director as we refine the department’s workflows and systems. Your input is the ground truth here — what comes up routinely, where jobs actually go wrong, what a correct technical decision looks like in practice. We build the workflow and automation around what you tell us; you’re not expected to design the systems yourself.

From there: you run the technical and operational side of the department day-to-day, reporting to the Managing Director.

What This Role Is Not

• Not a call-booking or data-entry role — that’s covered by the existing admin team
• Not a field role — your engineering days are behind you; your judgment isn’t
• Not a trainee role — we’re looking for depth of experience from day one

Benefits We Offer

• Career growth opportunities 
• Manufacturer & industry training 
• 20 days holiday + bank holidays 
• Time off over Christmas 
• Pension 
• Office-based hours, finish 4.30pm

Salary & Hours

£60,000 - £65,000 depending on experience

FT - 40hrs per week

Start 8.30  Finish 4.30 - Office-Based (NOT remote)

Key Responsibilities

Technical Ownership

• Review engineer job sheets and reports, and decide what action each one needs
• Diagnose faults accurately — distinguish product/manufacturing defects from installation or usage issues
• Order parts based on accurate diagnosis, not guesswork
• Allocate and oversee work for the field-based service engineers, holding them accountable for the standard and pace of their work
• Own warranty decisions both ways — confirming cover and remedy for customers, and pursuing valid claims back to suppliers where a fault is genuinely a manufacturing defect
• Speak directly with customers on technical matters when a query needs senior expertise
• Feed verified fault patterns back to the Factory Manager where a pattern points to a manufacturing issue

Team Support

• Be the go-to for technical questions the admin/booking team can’t answer themselves
• Support and upskill the team handling call booking and logging — you’re not doing their job, you’re the depth behind it

Systems Input (Initial Phase)

• Work with the Commercial Director to map how service and maintenance jobs actually flow today
• Flag where current process or data entry breaks down, and why
• Sign off that new workflows reflect real-world practice before they go live

Department Ownership (from month 3, approx.)

• Own technical and operational decision-making for the service and maintenance function
• Own the maintenance contract programme — renewals, attach rate, scheduled work
• Set the standard for job sheet quality and fault reporting across the team

Results Expected

•  Accurate fault diagnosis with minimal misdiagnosis/rework 
• Field engineers' work meets the standard and pace this role holds them to 
• Warranty decisions are correct and defensible both ways — customer remedy and supplier recovery 
• New workflows signed off in phase one actually reflect how jobs really work, with no go-live surprises

I will Meet these Standards

• Every job sheet reviewed and actioned within 24-48hours of receipt 
• No customer-facing technical query goes unanswered without follow-up within 2days
• Genuine manufacturing defects are flagged to the Factory Manager, not absorbed silently as one-offs

Requirements

• Senior, demonstrable technical knowledge of refrigeration and air conditioning systems — this is the non-negotiable
• Years of field experience is exactly what we’re looking for — this role exists for people who’ve earned the right to come off the road
• Experience reviewing engineer reports/job sheets and making accurate diagnostic and parts decisions from them
• Comfortable explaining technical reasoning clearly to a non-technical team
• Able to articulate process and workflow clearly, even without designing it yourself
• Experience handling warranty claims, ideally both customer-facing and with manufacturer/supplier

Other Special Requirements

• Full UK driving licence –There may be the odd requirement to visit a customer premises 
• F-Gas Category 1 certification — Would be an advantage but not essential if expired 
• Actively  fit — Putting out materials and spare parts for service-based engineers

We look forward to hearing from you. 

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