Operations Manager (m/f/d) for Heat Contracting

Who We Are

Kola NetZero connects owners of multi-family buildings with a leading provider for heat contracting: The owner gets a new, climate-friendly heating system without their own investment, the provider operates it for 15 years, and we accompany the process from the initial inquiry to the signing. Behind Kola NetZero is Kola Invest GmbH, a Hamburg-based family office focusing on residential real estate.

We are a small team with a big goal: to transition several thousand housing units per month to renewable heating. To achieve this, we are currently building the back office that turns submitted properties into contract-ready projects. You will be the first person in this role and will shape how we work.

Your Responsibilities

You will be responsible for the entire process of a property from its receipt to approval by the provider. Specifically:

• Pipeline Management: Keep 50 to 100 properties in process simultaneously. You will always know which property is in which phase, what is blocking it, and what needs to be done next, reporting this weekly to management.

• Property Input Review: Review energy performance certificates, heating cost statements, gas bills, and owner property lists, transfer data to our portfolio list, and check for completeness.

• Assess Technical Fit: Central or decentralized, energy source, boiler age, number of residential units, hot water preparation. You will help decide which properties go to the provider and which do not.

• Create Comparative Calculations: Prepare and explain to the owner today's costs versus costs with contracting over 15 years (fuel, CO2 price, maintenance, investment) using our tools.

• Coordinate Stakeholders: Owners, property managers, metering services, sales and technical departments of the provider, and our brokerage partners. You will collect missing documents, adhere to deadlines, and mediate when issues arise.

• Handover to Provider: Enter properties into the joint portfolio sheet, maintain status, coordinate site inspections, and drive the contract process until signing.

• Settle Partner Network: Assign brokered properties to partners and prepare commissions.

• Build Processes and Tools: You will define when a property is "complete" and when it is "contract-ready," document the workflows, and automate what is currently manual work using Google Sheets, Drive, and AI-powered evaluations.

Your Profile

Experience

• 3 to 7 years in a role where you have coordinated many processes in parallel, for example:

• Project management or project assistance at a heating contractor, energy provider, metering service, or contracting provider

• Property management or team lead in a larger property management company

• Operations or Customer Success in a PropTech or energy startup

• Project management for renovations and modernizations of residential properties

• Completed vocational training or degree, for example, in real estate, building services engineering, energy economics, industrial engineering, or business administration.

Project Management

• You can keep 80 balls in the air simultaneously without dropping any, and you decide for yourself what has priority.

• You can communicate equally well with owners, property managers, and technicians, and you kindly follow up, even for the third time on the same invoice.

• You define handover points and deadlines, monitor them, and can always state the status of the pipeline.

Technical/Subject Matter Expertise

• You can read an energy performance certificate and a heating cost statement, and you know the difference between a gas-individual heating system and a central heating system.

• You understand how property management works, what a condominium owners' association (WEG) is, and who makes decisions on behalf of the owner.

• You enjoy doing calculations, checking figures for plausibility, and can explain a comparative calculation.

Work Style and Tools

• Proficient in Excel or Google Sheets, ideally you have already operated a CRM or ticketing system.

• You document processes yourself and improve them, rather than just executing them.

• Open to using AI tools in your daily work, as a significant portion of document evaluation is done through them.

• Fluent in German (negotiation level).

Plus Points: Knowledge of GEG (Buildings Energy Act) or CO2KostAufG (CO2 Cost Allocation Act), experience with heat contracting or energy consulting, building a back office from scratch.

What we are NOT looking for: Pure administrative work without coordination experience, or corporate PMO with projects that have a 200-day lead time. With us, the projects are small, numerous, and fast.

What We Offer

• A role with direct impact: Every property you make contract-ready replaces an old gas or oil heating system.

• Building rather than administration: You define the processes that a team of 4 to 5 people will later use, and you will grow into the leadership of Operations.

• Short communication lines: You will work directly with the two managing directors and with the team of our contracting partner.

• Fixed salary plus participation in success, depending on the housing units brokered.

• Hybrid working, office in Hamburg.

• Modern tools: Google Workspace, AI-powered document evaluation, no paper files.

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