Residential Remodeling Designer
Full time · Our Scottsdale office, not remote · Client facing from the first phone call
Hourly, with every hour past forty paid at time and a half. Where you start in the range depends on how much you can already run without somebody checking behind you, and we will tell you roughly where we think you land on the first call rather than after three interviews.
For context, the going rate for an interior designer in the Phoenix metro is about $34.78 an hour. We are publishing ours so you can check that yourself instead of taking our word for it.
You design the remodel, and then you stay with it. First phone call, first walkthrough, the plans, the selections, the budget, the construction documents, the site visits, and the warranty call eleven months later. The homeowner has one person the whole way through, and that person is you.
That is not how most design build companies do it. At most of them you hand your drawings to production and find out how it went from somebody else. Which is why so many designers spend their careers watching their work get built slightly wrong by people they never met.
You did not get into design to hand off a drawing and hope.
You take the first phone call. You are still on it eleven months later.
At most design build companies the designer gets handed off twice. Somebody in sales sells it, you design it, production builds it, and a warranty coordinator takes the call when the drawer front is rubbing. Three handoffs, and the homeowner tells her story from the beginning to a new person every time.
We do not do that, and it is the single biggest thing that makes this seat different from the one you have now. You are on the first phone call. You walk the house. You design it, you price it with us, you specify every last thing in it, you are on site while it is being built, and you are the one who picks up when she calls at month eleven. One person, start to finish.
It is harder. It is also the reason our clients tell their neighbors about us, and it is why you will not spend your career watching your work get built slightly wrong by people you never met.
The four things you are responsible for
A design she loves, that fits the house
Not the design you would put in your portfolio. The one that solves what she actually told you on the first walkthrough, inside a 1978 ranch with a load bearing wall in the wrong place and a slab you cannot move.
A scope and a budget that hold
The design and the number get developed together so they never drift apart. If the project comes in forty thousand over on the estimate, that is a design problem, and it is yours.
Documents a superintendent can build from
Dimensioned, specified, decided. Every selection made and ordered before demo rather than during. The question we are trying to make disappear is the one that starts with a call from the field asking what you meant here.
A client who refers us
Six months after we hand the keys back, she is still telling somebody. That is the actual deliverable. The other three are how you get there.
About the leads. You are not prospecting. You are not cold calling, you are not working a territory, and you are not expected to go find your own business. The leads come in through the marketing we run and through clients who send their friends, and they get handed to you.
What that means in practice is that you are in a sales conversation on the first call, because in this business design and sales are the same conversation. You are listening to what she wants, telling her plainly what it costs, and helping her decide. If the words I am not a salesperson just went through your head, read that again. Neither am I. It is a consultation, and you will be the person in the room who actually knows how a house goes together.
What you will actually do
- Take the first call and run the in home consultation. You hear it from her, not from a sales rep's notes
- Measure the existing space accurately enough that nothing in the field is a surprise
- Design in Chief Architect: floor plans, elevations, 3D so she can see it, and the construction documents we build from
- Develop scope and budget with Scott and the production team so the design and the number move together
- Specify everything. Cabinets, counters, tile, plumbing, lighting, hardware, flooring, paint. Make the decisions happen before demo instead of during
- Run selections meetings at our showroom and at vendors, and keep the client moving without rushing her
- Keep the project, the selections and the client communication current in JobTread. We will teach you the software
- Be on your job sites. Not a drive by. There to answer the question before it becomes a change order
- Walk the final with the client, build the punch list, and own the eleven month warranty call
- Photograph your finished work and sit for the two minutes it takes us to tell the story of it
What we need you to already have
- Chief Architect. This one is required rather than preferred. It is what we draw in, and we are not in a position to teach the software and the job at the same time.
- A design education. An associate degree in interior design, architecture or a related field at minimum. A bachelor's is welcome and is not worth more to us than two years of doing this well.
- Enough construction literacy to be dangerous. You do not need to have framed a wall. You do need to know that moving that one is a different conversation than moving this one, and you need to be able to tell a plumber what you want in words he recognizes.
- The ability to sit across from a homeowner and tell her the truth. That the wall cannot move. That the number is $240,000 and not $160,000. That the tile she loves is on a fourteen week lead time. Said kindly, said early, said before it costs her something.
- Organization that holds under load. By year two you are carrying ten projects. Ten clients, ten selection schedules, ten sets of lead times. People who are brilliant and scattered struggle badly in this seat.
- A home inside reasonable reach of Scottsdale. You are in our office and on job sites across Scottsdale, Paradise Valley, Phoenix, Tempe, Chandler, Gilbert, Mesa and Ahwatukee.
What we do not need you to have
Ten years of experience. A book of business. A list of awards. Lorrie, who has run design here since the beginning, is still here and intends to be. The right person two years in who can draw, who listens harder than she talks, and who we get to teach the rest of it is worth more to us than somebody senior we have to un-train. If you are closer to the beginning than the middle, apply anyway and let us decide.
Your first ninety days, in writing
We have been burned by vague onboarding too. So here is the plan, and you can hold us to it on your start date.
You learn how we actually work, and you carry nothing alone
JobTread and our Chief Architect standards. The showroom and the selections library. Our trade partners and what each one is good at. You sit in on my consultations and Lorrie's design meetings, you walk every active job site with the superintendents, and you read the files on two finished projects start to finish, including one that went sideways. No project of your own yet, on purpose.
You take one small project and run it with Lorrie behind you
A bathroom or a single room, with a real client and a real completion date. You draw it, you specify it, you run the selections meetings, and Lorrie reviews everything before it goes out. She is checking your work on purpose at this stage, and she will tell you what she changed and why.
You take your own first calls
You run the consultation, I am on it with you for the first few, and then I am not. You are carrying two or three projects at different stages. At ninety days we sit down, look at what held and what did not, and agree on what you are carrying for the rest of the year.
By the end of year one you should be running six to eight projects comfortably. By year two, ten. That is what this seat is built to hold, and it is the number the pay is built around.
$32 to $38 an hour, overtime paid, and no commission. Here is why that last part is on purpose.
If you have been designing for a remodeler for any length of time you have probably been offered a percentage of what you sell. So the first thing you are going to want to know is why we are not doing that, and whether it means you are leaving money on the table.
Three reasons we pay hourly here
- 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, including the Thursday evening meeting with the client who gets home at six.
- Commission pays for closing, and closing is a third of this job. We are asking you to still be the person on it eleven months later, standing in a finished kitchen, handling the drawer that is rubbing. A commission plan quietly pays you to be somewhere else by then. I would rather not build that fight into your paycheck.
- The leads are ours. We generate them with the marketing we run and the clients who send their friends. Paying you a percentage of business we brought in sounds generous right up until the month the phone is slow, and then you are being punished for something you do not control. That is not a deal I would take, so I am not going to offer you one.
If that math does not work for you, I understand. There are companies in this valley that will pay you a percentage and I am not going to tell you they are wrong. I am telling you what we do and why, so you can decide before the first interview instead of after the third.
Every hour past forty is paid at time and a half. Where you land in the range depends on how much you can already carry without somebody reviewing it, and we will tell you roughly where we think you are on the first call.
Overtime, actually paid
Time and a half past forty. The evening client meeting and the Friday that runs long cost us more and earn you more. Nobody here is salaried into working for free.
$50 for every five star review, to everybody
Every five star review pays $50 to every person in the company, not just whoever ran that job. A remodel goes right because design, the office and the field all did their part. You get it in your first month.
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. We would rather you take it than bank it.
A company phone number
A business line on your own phone, the way Devan and I do it. Clients reach the company instead of your personal number, and you get to put the work down at night.
Mileage on us
You drive your own car, and every mile you drive for us is reimbursed at the IRS standard rate. Job sites, vendor runs, client meetings. You should not be funding our projects out of your own gas tank.
Your certifications and your education
Dues, continuing education and certifications are ours if they make you better at this. So is the software. You should not be paying to stay current in your own profession.
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.
Where this sits, and where it goes
There is a seat below this one, and we publish its pay too, so you can see the whole ladder rather than one rung of it.
The jump from that seat to this one is about $8,300 a year. The gap is deliberate.
If the two ranges touched, moving up would feel like a rounding error instead of a raise. They do not touch because they are two different jobs. One supports projects. This one owns them.
Inside this range, what moves you is simple and you will never have to guess at it: how many projects you can carry at once without somebody checking behind you, and whether your drawings and selections are complete enough that the field is not calling you with questions. Six to eight projects puts you in the middle of the range. Ten puts you at the top of it.
And here is the part I am not going to dress up. Design here is run by Lorrie, my wife and co-founder, and that is not a seat opening on a schedule. If you are looking for a title above this one on a two year timeline, I cannot promise you that and I am not going to imply it.
What I can promise is the review on the calendar every year with the number on the table, that the range on this page moves when the market moves rather than when you threaten to leave, and that you will be mentored by somebody who has been designing remodels in this valley for two decades instead of being handed a seat and left to figure it out.
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.
What I can tell you is that the pay on this page is set with that gap in mind. If health coverage is the thing 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 every designer, 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 design it and hand it off. The part of this job that happens after the drawings are done is not a bonus round. It is half the job, it is the half most designers never get, and if the idea of standing in a dusty kitchen at 7:30 in the morning sounds like somebody else's problem, this seat will wear on you.
- You are looking for a portfolio. We build in other people's houses, inside their budgets, around their load bearing walls and their mother in law who hates gray. Some of what you design here will not be what you would have done. The project is hers. Your taste is the tool, not the point.
- You do not want to talk about money. You are the one who tells her the number. Not a salesperson, not an estimator, not me. If the price conversation is the part of the job you have always been grateful somebody else handled, that part is yours now and it starts on the first call.
- You want to work from home. We have a showroom in Scottsdale with a selections library in it, a production team that needs to grab you, and clients who come in. There is flexibility in a week here. There is not a remote version of this job, and pretending otherwise would be unfair to both of us.
- You want to go deep on one project at a time. By year two you are carrying ten. If the thing you loved about your last job was living inside one design for four months, this will feel like an interruption machine.
- Your instinct when something goes wrong is to fix it quietly and hope. You will specify the wrong finish eventually. Everybody does. We can work with almost any mistake that gets surfaced the day it is found. We cannot work with hearing about it from the homeowner.
None of that is a character judgment. There are good companies where every one of those is fine, and designers 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.
You have probably 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, how long you have been in Chief Architect, and whether the part of this job that happens after the drawings are done sounds like a feature or a burden.
Time at our showroom with Lorrie and me, and bring your work
Bring two or three projects you have drawn. We are not grading the photography. We want to hear what the client asked for, what you changed and why, what you got wrong, and what it cost. Lorrie will ask you about the drawings and I will ask you about the conversations. We will walk you through real projects of ours in return, including the ones that did not go to plan and what we did about them. 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 we are asking them what you were like to hand a difficult client to. 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 set of our construction documents, and you can see how we actually run a design rather than how we describe it. Paid either way. For this position it is worth doing, because the difference between a company that says the designer stays with the project and one that means it is visible in about an hour on a job site.
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.
Both, and anybody who tells you those are separate in a design build company is describing a company with a handoff problem. You take the first call, you listen, you design, and you tell her what it costs. That is a sales conversation whether or not we put the word on your business card. What it is not is prospecting. We generate the leads and hand them to you. You are never going to be asked to go find work, chase a list, or hit a call quota.
You need it. This is the one requirement on the page we are not flexible about. Chief Architect is what we draw in, every file we have is in it, and we cannot teach you the software and the job at the same time without the first year being miserable for both of us. If you are deep in another program and willing to learn Chief on your own before you start, tell us that on the application and we will have the conversation. We would rather know than guess.
Two or three while you are ramping, six to eight by the end of your first year, and ten by year two. Ten is fewer than a designer carries at most companies this size, and that is on purpose. You are staying with each one from the first phone call through the eleven month warranty call, which is time most designers never have to spend. The number is lower because the involvement is deeper.
You report to me. Lorrie is my wife, our co-founder, and she has been designing remodels in this valley for two decades. She runs design, she will mentor you, and she will keep the most complex projects on her own plate while you come up. That is the honest arrangement: you are not replacing her and you are not waiting for her to leave. You are being taught by her. Devan, our general manager, runs production, and you will be in front of her and the superintendents on every job before it starts.
This is an in person job based out of our Scottsdale showroom, with job sites across the central and east valley. There is flexibility inside a week here, and there is not a remote version of this seat. Most weeks land close to forty hours, and everything past forty is paid at time and a half. Some client meetings land in an early evening because that is when working homeowners are home, and those are paid hours like any other. 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. Job sites, vendor runs, the showroom to a client's house and back. You log it, we pay it, and you are not quietly funding our projects 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.
Hourly because we close every project out against what we estimated it would cost, and that only works if we know the actual hours. The side effect is that you get paid for the evening meeting instead of donating it. No commission for two reasons. Commission pays you for closing, and we need you to still be on the project eleven months later, so a commission plan would quietly pay you to be somewhere else. And the leads are ours, generated by our marketing and our past clients, so a percentage would punish you in a slow month for something you do not control.
Most of our work runs $100,000 to $500,000, and the average project is around $200,000. Kitchens, bathrooms, whole home remodels, additions and guest houses across Scottsdale, Paradise Valley, Phoenix, Tempe, Chandler, Gilbert, Mesa and Ahwatukee. Almost all of it is existing homes rather than new construction, which means the design problem is usually what is already there and cannot move. Roughly 90 percent of the work on any project is performed by our trade partners.
If you have a design degree and you can draw in Chief Architect, yes, and you would start toward the bottom of the range rather than being turned away. If you do not have Chief yet, or you are still finishing school, the seat you want is Design Assistant and Project Coordinator, which is open and published on its own page. That one is built for somebody who is good and early, and the step from it into this one is about $8,300 a year. Apply for the seat you can do today rather than the one on the business card.
If this one is a reach right now, the seat built for somebody earlier is Design Assistant and Project Coordinator. 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, why there is no commission, how many projects you would carry, what your first ninety days look like, 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.
You did not get into design to hand off a drawing and hope.
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 would rather talk to Lorrie about the design side specifically, ask and she will set it up.
You do not have to apply to ask a question. If you are working somewhere now and you would rather nobody knew you were looking, I understand that completely and it stays between us. Phoenix remodeling is a small world and we have no interest in costing you the job you currently have.
Apply below
Ten minutes. You will hear back within one business day with a short video from me explaining exactly what happens next. Send a portfolio if you have one ready, and if you do not, tell us what you have drawn and we will ask to see it later rather than making you build something to apply.
Scott Hochuli, Founder. Hochuli Design & Remodeling Team, Scottsdale. Est. 2001.