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A resource from RocketLevel for restoration company owners and ops leaders, backed by decades of experience in the trade.
Once you have mapped the seats your business needs, the next question is what each seat actually does and how you know the person in it is succeeding. This library gives you both for every role in a restoration company: a job description (the responsibilities) and a scorecard (the three to five outcomes that define the seat done well). They are pulled from how restoration shops actually run, so adapt each one to how your company works. Pair each role with the hiring scorecard method to hire against outcomes, and the accountability chart to see where it fits.
The labor market raises the stakes. In the 2026 workforce survey from the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) and NCCER, the construction craft training foundation (AGC publishes the analysis free), 87 percent of firms reported openings for hourly craft positions, and 88 percent of those firms said the positions were as hard or harder to fill than a year earlier. Salaried seats are short too: 82 percent reported openings there (AGC announcement, September 3, 2026; 1,830 respondents). Defining each seat clearly makes it easier to fill and to keep filled.
The roles are grouped by function, so open the group you are hiring for, take the role, and make it yours. Field and Production (technicians by specialty, lead technician, superintendent, project and production managers, contents and cleaning crews). Reconstruction and Trades (reconstruction project manager, division manager, lead carpenter, tradespeople, subcontractor coordinator). Estimating (estimator, desk estimator, large-loss estimator, supplement writer, file reviewer). Claims and Adjuster Relations (claims coordinator, file manager, program compliance). Sales and Marketing (business development rep, business developer, account manager, marketing). Office and Administration (customer service rep (CSR), dispatcher, scheduler, intake, admin, warranty care). Finance and Accounting (accounts receivable (AR), accounts payable (AP), payroll, bookkeeper, controller, CFO). Operations, Warehouse and Fleet (operations manager, warehouse, equipment, fleet, purchasing, IT). HR, Recruiting and Training. Leadership and Executive (owner, general manager (GM), VPs, branch manager). Safety, Compliance and Quality (safety officer, compliance, quality assurance (QA)). There is also a Nearshore and Remote-Friendly Seats index of the roles most commonly staffed remotely.
Decide whether the seat is an employee or a contractor, and decide it honestly. Writing "1099" on a job description does not make someone a contractor, and misclassification is one of the more expensive mistakes a restoration shop can make. Federal wage and hour law uses the Department of Labor's economic reality test at 29 CFR 795.110, which weighs opportunity for profit or loss, investment, permanence, control, how integral the work is, and skill and initiative, as a totality rather than a checklist. That is a different test than the IRS control test, and passing one does not settle the other.
Several states go further with an ABC test: California Labor Code 2775, Massachusetts chapter 149 section 148B, New Jersey 43:21-19(i)(6), and Illinois 820 ILCS 185. Prong B of that test asks whether the work is outside the usual course of your business, and a restoration company hiring restoration technicians fails it by definition.
Salary is not an exemption. Paying a supervisor a flat salary does not make them exempt from overtime. The exemption depends on the duties actually performed plus a salary that clears the threshold. Federally that is $684 per week, $35,568 a year, set at 29 CFR 541.600. The 2024 rule that would have raised it was vacated, and the Department of Labor restored the 2019 levels in May 2026. California requires twice the state minimum wage for full-time work, $70,304 a year once the state minimum hits $16.90 in 2026, and its duties test is stricter than the federal one. If a seat below carries a salary and a supervisory title, get the duties test checked before the first paycheck rather than after a wage claim.
And when you post it, check whether the state requires a pay range in the posting. As of October 2026, pay transparency laws cover a lot of the country and the employee-count thresholds differ: California sets it at 15 under Labor Code 432.3 and Illinois at 15 under 820 ILCS 112/10(b-25). Washington is 15, New Jersey 10 counted over 20 calendar weeks, Massachusetts 25 in the commonwealth, Minnesota 30, and New York 4. Colorado has no threshold at all. Confirm the current rule for the state you are hiring in, because these change often and a noncompliant posting is a cheap mistake to avoid.
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Keep going: pair this with The Accountability Chart: Who Really Owns What in Your Company to map the seats, Hiring That Sticks: Build a Restoration Hiring Scorecard to hire against the outcomes, and the Commercial Role Templates: Job Descriptions and Scorecards for the downloadable commercial role sheet.
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