Design Assistant and Project Coordinator
Full time · Our Scottsdale office, not remote · Built for somebody good and early
Hourly, with every hour past forty paid at time and a half. Where you start depends on what you can already do in a drawing program and how much of a process you can hold without being reminded, and we will tell you roughly where we think you land on the first call rather than after three interviews.
For context, the bottom quarter of interior designer pay in the Phoenix metro sits around $27.70 an hour. The top of our range lands right about there, which is where a support seat should land. We are publishing it so you can check that yourself instead of taking our word for it.
This is the seat where you learn to design remodels by being inside real ones, instead of waiting three years for somebody to let you touch a project.
You keep the drawings current, the selections ordered, the lead times tracked and the client informed, for a designer who is carrying ten projects at once and cannot be in the showroom and on a job site at the same time. Nobody is going to hand you a broom and call it paying your dues. You will be in the file, in the drawings and in the vendor conversations in your first month, because that is the only way this works.
Most firms make you wait years to be useful. We cannot afford to.
The designer gets to stay with the client because you are holding everything else.
Our designer owns a remodel from the first phone call through the warranty call eleven months later. That is the promise we make to homeowners, and it is the thing that makes people tell their neighbors about us. It is also only possible if somebody is keeping the drawings current, the selections ordered and the lead times tracked while the designer is sitting in a kitchen in Paradise Valley.
That somebody is this seat. It is not a junior version of the designer's job. It is the other half of it.
The four things you are responsible for
The drawings stay current
Redlines get drawn. Revisions get dated and reissued. The set the superintendent is holding in the field is the set the client approved, not the one from three weeks ago.
Nothing is late because nobody ordered it
Purchase orders, confirmations, lead times, delivery dates, damage claims and returns. If the tile is fourteen weeks out, somebody has to know that in week one, and that somebody is you.
The file tells the truth
Selections, specifications, approvals and client communication live in JobTread, current. A project file that is three days behind is how a $3,000 mistake happens.
The client never wonders
Meeting confirmations, recaps of what was decided, samples pulled before she walks in. The homeowner should always know what happens next, and often that note comes from you.
About the design part, because that is what you actually want to know. Yes, you will draw. You will take redlines into the model, build elevations, lay out plans, and put together presentation material. How much of that you do, and how fast that grows, depends entirely on how good you get and how quickly the coordination work stops needing all of your attention.
What we are not going to do is promise you that this is secretly a designer job. It is not. It is a coordination job with real drawing work in it, sitting directly underneath a designer seat we have published the pay for. If you do this well, that seat is the next one, and the step is about $8,300 a year.
What you will actually do
- Take the designer's redlines into Chief Architect and keep plans, elevations and the model current
- Assemble and reissue drawing sets, and make sure the field is never holding an old one
- Build and maintain the selections schedule for every active project: what is chosen, what is approved, what is ordered, what has landed
- Write and track purchase orders with our vendors, chase confirmations, and flag a lead time the week we learn it rather than the week it hurts
- Coordinate deliveries with the superintendents, and handle damage claims, shortages and returns when something shows up wrong
- Keep selections, specifications and client communication current in JobTread. We will teach you the software
- Prepare for selections meetings: pull samples, lay out options, have the pricing ready
- Send the meeting confirmations and the recap of what was decided, so nothing lives only in somebody's memory
- Keep the showroom and the selections library in a state you would want to walk a client through
- Get to job sites with the designer, so the thing you specified on a screen becomes something you have seen installed
What we need you to already have
- Drawing software you are comfortable in. Chief Architect is what we use and it is what you would be learning, so having it already puts you near the top of the range. It is not required. What is required is that you have worked in some drafting or design program well enough that a new one is a translation rather than a first language.
- A design education, finished or well underway. An associate degree in interior design, architecture or a related field. If you are still in school we are open to it, as long as you are past the first year and far enough along that the vocabulary is yours.
- Organization that is almost uncomfortable. This job is fundamentally about nothing falling through a crack across ten projects at once. If you have ever been told you are too detailed, that was not a criticism here.
- Written communication you are not embarrassed by. A lot of this seat is email and documentation. Clear and short beats polished.
- The willingness to say I do not know yet. You are going to be early, and we know that. The only version of this that goes badly is the one where you guess instead of asking.
- A home inside reasonable reach of Scottsdale. You are in our office most days, with job sites across the central and east valley.
What we do not need you to have
Remodeling experience. A finished portfolio. Chief Architect on day one. Years of anything. We are hiring for how fast you learn and how little needs to be repeated to you, and both of those show up in an hour of conversation.
Your first ninety days, in writing
Early career people get the vaguest onboarding of anybody, which is backwards. So here is the plan, and you can hold us to it on your start date.
You learn our systems and you shadow, and nothing is yours yet
JobTread, our Chief Architect standards, the selections library, our vendors and our trade partners. You sit in on selections meetings, you read two finished project files start to finish including one that went sideways, and you walk active job sites so you know what the drawings turn into. Lorrie and the designer are explaining why, not just what.
You take the coordination on two live projects
Selections schedule, purchase orders, lead times, deliveries, file. Somebody is checking behind you on every one of them at this stage and will tell you what they changed and why. You also start taking redlines into the model.
You carry the coordination for everything active, and you start drawing more
By now the ordering and the file should not need checking. That is what frees up room for the drawing work to grow. At ninety days we sit down, look at what held and what did not, and talk about what the next year looks like.
We will also tell you at ninety days, plainly, whether we think the designer seat is where this is headed for you. Some people love the coordination and want to own it. Both answers are real, and neither one gets you shown the door.
$24 to $28 an hour, overtime actually paid, and a next seat with its own published number.
We pay hourly for an unglamorous reason. We close every project out against what we estimated it would cost, and that only works if we know the actual hours. The reason is bookkeeping. The consequence is that we pay you for every hour you work, which is not the standard treatment of an early career design employee in this industry and we know it.
Every hour past forty is paid at time and a half. Most weeks here land close to forty.
Overtime, actually paid
Time and a half past forty. Nobody here is salaried into unpaid evenings, and that includes the person earliest in their career.
$50 for every five star review, to everybody
Every five star review pays $50 to every person in the company, not just whoever was in front of the client. You get it in your first month, same amount as me.
Thirteen paid days in year one
Eight paid holidays plus five days of PTO in your first year, and the PTO goes up every year after that.
Mileage on us
You drive your own car, and every mile you drive for us is reimbursed at the IRS standard rate. Site visits, vendor runs, delivery meets. You should not be funding our projects out of your own gas tank.
Your software and your schooling
Design software is ours. So are dues, certifications and continuing education. If you are finishing a degree while you work here, we will build the schedule around your classes rather than making you choose.
Taught on purpose, not by accident
Lorrie has been designing remodels in this valley for two decades and she is still here. The whole point of this seat is proximity to that.
An annual review that happens
Once a year, on the calendar, with your pay on the table. You should not have to ask for it, and you should not have to threaten to leave to get it.
Now the part you would notice on your own, so I will say it first
Look at this page and then look at the Designer page and you will find a gap. This seat tops out at $28 an hour. That one starts at $32. There is nothing in between.
That gap is not a ceiling. It is the raise.
Four dollars an hour is about $8,300 a year. If the two ranges touched, moving up would feel like a rounding error instead of a promotion. They do not touch on purpose.
What has to be true for you to cross it: you can run a design from a first conversation to a construction set without somebody checking behind you, you can sit across from a homeowner and tell her what it costs, and you are working in Chief Architect well enough that the drawings are yours rather than somebody's redlines you transcribed. That is the whole list, and it is the same list on the Designer page, because it is the same job.
How long that takes depends entirely on you and on how much of a head start you walk in with. Somebody who arrives with a degree and real software hours and who gets good fast could be having that conversation inside two years. Somebody still finishing school will take longer, and that is not a knock on anybody.
Here is my end of it. We will tell you at ninety days, and at every review after that, exactly where you are against that list. In words, not in hints. The thing I will not do is let you work here for three years assuming you are on a path nobody ever confirmed.
And if you are doing the designer's job and I have not moved you, that is my failure, not yours. Say it out loud to me. I would rather hear it than lose you.
And the thing we do not offer yet
We do not have company health insurance. I am not going to bury that in a benefits list and let you discover it on your start date.
We are a small company, Lorrie and I pay for our own family coverage out of pocket like everybody else here does, and I have not yet built a price structure that carries a group plan. I am working on it. I am not going to promise you a date I cannot hold.
If health coverage is the thing you or your family needs most right now, I understand completely, and you should weigh that carefully before you apply.
This is not the right seat for everybody, and we would rather you find that out here.
We could leave this out and get more applications. We would also spend the next two months in conversations that were never going to work, and so would you.
You should probably not apply for this one if any of these are true:
- You want to be designing your own projects by spring. The path is real and the number at the top of it is published. It is also earned, and the ordering and the file and the lead times come first. If a year of being the person who makes sure nothing falls through a crack sounds like a detour, it will feel like one.
- Details bore you. This job is purchase orders, confirmation numbers, revision dates and lead times across ten projects at once. There is beautiful work in it and there is a great deal of careful work around the beautiful work. The ratio is not close.
- You want to design and not talk to anybody. You are emailing clients, calling vendors, coordinating with superintendents, and standing in the showroom when somebody walks in. The quiet version of this job does not exist here.
- Your instinct when something goes wrong is to fix it quietly and hope. You will order the wrong finish eventually. Everybody does. We can work with almost any mistake made by somebody learning. We cannot work with finding out about it when the box opens on a job site.
- You need somebody to tell you what to do every hour. You will be taught, checked and corrected on purpose for the first two months. After that the question of what happens next is often yours to answer, and the answer is in the project file.
- You are between things. Most people here have been here a long time. We hire slowly because we are trying to hire once, and this seat in particular is an investment we are making in somebody we expect to be sitting across from in five years.
None of that is a character judgment. There are good firms where every one of those is fine, and people who are happier at them.
If you read all six and got more interested rather than less, keep going.
Exactly what happens after you apply for this position.
If you are early in your career you have almost certainly applied somewhere and never heard anything back. We are not going to do that to you. Here is the whole thing, start to finish, usually a couple of weeks.
You apply, and you hear back
An email with a short video from me. Not an autoresponder telling you we will be in touch. An actual explanation of what happens next, so you can decide whether you still want it.
A short call, twenty minutes or so
Phone, Zoom or FaceTime, whichever is easiest for you. Usually Devan, our general manager, sometimes me. Short on purpose, because there are three or four things that would end this either way and we would both rather find them out fast. What you are making now, what you need to make, when you could start, what drawing software you have actually spent hours in, and where you are in school if you are still in it.
Time at our showroom with Lorrie and me, and bring whatever you have drawn
School projects are fine. Half finished things are fine. We are not grading the rendering. We want to hear how you made the decisions and what you would do differently now. Lorrie will ask about the drawings and I will ask how you keep track of things, because that is most of this job. We will walk you through real projects of ours in return, including one that did not go to plan. Come with questions. The people who ask hard questions in this meeting are almost always the ones we end up hiring.
References, then an offer in writing
We call three people, and for this position an instructor or a studio professor counts. We are asking them whether things you were handed came back finished. Then the offer comes on paper with the hourly rate, the benefits and the start date on it. Nothing gets negotiated after you say yes.
Then, if it would help you decide, come spend a paid half day with us
Devan will take you to a job site or two, you will sit with a live project file and a selections schedule, and you can see what this work actually looks like on a Tuesday. Paid either way. For a first or second job out of school this is worth doing, because a job description can only tell you so much and an afternoon tells you the rest.
Most companies make you audition. We would rather put the offer on the table and then let you check our work.
And if we go a different direction at any point, you will hear that from a person and not from silence. You took the time to apply. The least we can do is close the loop.
Questions we get about this position
If yours is not here, call the office at 602.451.0323 and ask for Devan. You do not have to apply first to ask a question.
Not for this seat. It is required on the Designer page and it is not required here. What we do need is that you have spent real hours in some drafting or design program, whether that is Chief, Revit, AutoCAD, SketchUp or something your school put in front of you. Software is a translation if you already think in plans and elevations, and it is a wall if you do not. If you already know Chief, say so, because it puts you near the top of the range on day one.
Yes, as long as you are past your first year and far enough along that the vocabulary is yours. This is a full time position, so we would need to work out a schedule that is honest about both, and we will build it around your classes rather than making you choose between them. We would rather have the right person finishing a degree on our schedule than the wrong person with the diploma already on the wall.
Less than half at the start, and growing. The honest version is that this is a coordination job with real drawing work in it. Early on you are taking the designer's redlines into the model, building elevations and assembling sets while you carry the selections, the ordering and the file. As the coordination stops needing all of your attention, the drawing grows into the space that opens up. Anybody who tells you an assistant seat is mostly design is selling you something.
It depends on you, and anybody who gives you a number in an interview is guessing. What I can tell you is what has to be true: you can run a design from a first conversation to a construction set without somebody checking behind you, you can sit across from a homeowner and tell her what it costs, and the drawings are yours rather than somebody's redlines you transcribed. Somebody who arrives with a degree and real software hours and gets good fast could be having that conversation inside two years. Somebody still finishing school will take longer. We will tell you where you stand at every review rather than letting you guess.
Then you are still doing a real job that we need done, and the pay still moves with how good you are at it. Some people discover they would rather own the coordination than carry the client, and that is a legitimate career rather than a consolation prize. This is not an up or out position and nobody gets shown the door for not being promoted. What I will not do is let you work here for three years assuming you are on a path nobody ever confirmed.
You report to me, and day to day you work alongside our designer and Lorrie, my wife and co-founder, who has been designing remodels in this valley for two decades. Devan, our general manager, runs production, and you will be coordinating with her and the field superintendents constantly, because every delivery and every drawing revision touches their work. It is a small company and there is nobody here you will not know by name in a month.
This is an in person job based out of our Scottsdale showroom, with job site visits across the central and east valley. There is flexibility inside a week here, and there is not a remote version of this seat, because half of what you are learning happens by being near people who are doing it. Most weeks land close to forty hours and everything past forty is paid at time and a half. Weekends are not a normal part of this job.
You use your own car, and every mile you drive for us is reimbursed at the IRS standard rate. Most of your week is in the office so this is lighter than it is for the designer, but site visits and vendor runs are part of the job and you should not be funding them out of your own gas tank. What we do not have yet is a shared shop truck the design team can grab. I want one and I am working on it, and I am not going to promise you a date I cannot hold.
No. It is a full time job with a published hourly rate, paid overtime, thirteen paid days off in year one and a next seat whose pay is also published. We do not run unpaid internships and we are not going to call something a learning opportunity to avoid paying for it. You will learn an enormous amount here, and you will be paid the whole time you are doing it.
If you already run designs on your own and work in Chief Architect, the seat you want is Residential Remodeling Designer. Broader questions about the company and the values are answered on the careers page.
If you are still reading, we should talk.
Everything about this position is on this page. What it pays, what the next seat pays, what has to be true for you to get there, how much of it is coordination rather than design, what we do not offer yet, and every step of what happens after you hit submit. You should be able to decide without a single phone call.
Most firms make you wait years to be useful. We cannot afford to.
Not ready to fill out a form yet?
That is fine. Call the office at 602.451.0323 and ask for Devan, our general manager. She can answer anything you want before you put your name on something, and if you want to ask Lorrie what the design side actually looks like, say so and she will set it up.
You do not have to apply to ask a question. If you are working somewhere now, or you are in school and would rather nobody knew you were looking, I understand that completely and it stays between us.
Apply below
Ten minutes. You will hear back within one business day with a short video from me explaining exactly what happens next. Send whatever you have drawn, including school work and unfinished things. If you do not have anything you want to send yet, apply anyway and tell us what you have worked in.
Scott Hochuli, Founder. Hochuli Design & Remodeling Team, Scottsdale. Est. 2001.