Infrared Field Service Technician

Please be sure to read the entire job description before applying.

This description is designed to answer most, if not all, questions you may have about

the position responsibilities/compensation, our company and what we are looking for in an employee.

 

Since 1984, we have been performing top-quality Infrared Thermographic Inspections for commercial and industrial customers throughout New England and parts of New York and New Jersey. The vast majority of our work is electrical, steam and roof inspections. The infrared scanner ?sees? heat and is used to determine where problems exist in electrical, mechanical, steam, and roofing systems. The thermographer uses the infrared camera to inspect the system and interprets the infrared image to determine where the customer?s problems are and create a report for the customer that summarizes the findings of the testing. Our customers represent a wide variety of industries: manufacturing plants, hospitals, hotels, municipal utility systems, paper mills, schools, ski areas, waste water treatment plants, co-generation plants and many others. 

 

What we are looking for:  Please note that this is NOT an IT position. We are seeking someone who has recent (within the last 10 years) hands-on experience with electrical and mechanical systems and/or construction. Prior field service experience is also preferable.  While training in infrared thermography is provided, a base knowledge of typical systems you will encounter at our customers? facilities is helpful.

 

Travel: Typically, the infrared inspections are performed on facilities that are outside Vermont where our main office is located. At this point in time, we work with industrial and commercial customers, the majority of which are in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and New York. We do have clients that are located outside these territories, and occasionally you will be asked to travel to these areas on an ?as needed? basis. Thermographers work from their home bases with all scheduling and administration coordinated by the corporate office in Vermont.

 

Electrical-Mechanical Inspections:  A typical workweek of Electrical-Mechanical Inspections consists of four to five days of inspection. Report generation takes place in the evenings at home or on the road in a hotel. Depending on the distance from the customer?s facility to the thermographer?s home, it may be necessary to get up early in the morning in order to arrive at the job site for a 7:00am, 7:30am or 8:00am start time. From there, the next four days of inspection might be sprinkled around southern New Hampshire and Maine, southern New England and or the Metropolitan New York/Long Island area. In some cases, you should be close enough to your home to return each evening. However, many may require that nights be spent on the road. For example, if a customer is far away and requires two or more days of testing to inspect all of their equipment, or if the sequence of job locations throughout the week makes the drive home impractical, it makes more sense to spend the night in a local hotel rather than driving several hours each way to and from your home.

 

We require that you be flexible in terms of the schedule and be prepared for a great deal of driving and occasional overnight travel. The schedule is based on customer demand and we cannot guarantee that each service appointment will be within a pre-determined location to your home base.

 

Roofing Inspections:  We also inspect roofing systems. Typically, the infrared scan is performed on large, flat roofs such as those found on schools, office buildings and factories. This requires inspecting the roof at night after a sunny day. In the evening, the infrared scanner can ?see? where water damage is occurring because the wet areas are warmer than the rest of the roof. Roofing Inspections are typically done at night. Sometimes it will be necessary to perform an electrical inspection during the day, and then drive to a roof inspection in the afternoon in order to perform the roof job at night. In these cases, you would be paid for both the roof inspection and the electrical inspection even though they were both done in one day.

 

Transportation:  You will need to have or buy a reliable automobile to perform this job. We compensate for the use of your personal vehicle by covering all mileage costs at a current rate of $.455 per mile (subject to change according to the Federal rate). We also pay for all hotel costs and meals when the job requires you to eat on the road or spend the night away from home. A typical workweek will consist of approximately 400-500 miles of travel, although this figure may go up or down as needed.

 

Responsibilities: The infrared thermographer will show up at the job on time with a neat and orderly appearance (shirts with our company logo are provided). This person needs to have good independent work skills and be highly organized. You will be working with personnel from the customer?s facility. Typically, they will escort you around the plant during an electrical inspection, showing you the locations of the electrical gear to be inspected. The thermographer needs to have a personable, professional attitude, and should be able to interact positively with a wide variety of people. After the training period, the thermographer will take care of his or her own reports. These will need to be shipped to the main office via UPS or FedEx at company expense for typing and shipment of the final product to the customer. Our main office is in Williston, VT, located just outside Burlington in the northern part of the state.

 

Infrared Thermography is a very interesting and challenging job. It takes approximately one year of work and training to really become proficient at infrared inspections. The situations vary considerably, and the thermographer needs to have an open and curious mind in order to learn and grow in the job. While the job is interesting, it is also a ?rough and ready? sort of position. While some of the inspections occur in very calm and clean environments such as hospitals or hotels, other inspections are done in paper mills or manufacturing plants. Paper mills are dirty, noisy, hot environments. It takes a lot of energy to maintain a good outlook and high quality work when working in these types of situations. The roof inspections are interesting but can also be somewhat dirty. Some jobs require scanning, cutting and patching tar and gravel roofs. Infrared Testing can also be a physically demanding job. There are times when sustained hard work and a positive attitude are needed to provide high-quality information and maintain good customer relations.

 

A few items should be mentioned here in the interest of full disclosure. As mentioned previously, our company provides extremely high quality services to our customers. The responsibility for providing accurate and valuable information falls almost completely on the shoulders of the thermographer who is operating largely independently. While we make every effort to accurately screen our applicants, and provide training and support at the highest level we can manage, our experience is that only about 50% of the people who attempt to perform the service can do it to our standards. Therefore, in the past only about half of the people that we have attempted to train are able to accomplish the job at the necessary standard of quality. We are not trying to scare you off, but you should be aware that the job is demanding as well as interesting. Here are a few points that may help you in your decision about whether to apply for this job:

 

?  Organizational Ability: Typically, the job requires a significant amount of production at the customer?s site. In order to produce a reasonable volume at a high standard, the thermographer must have good organizational skills. Normally, we are not trying to rush through the work, but it is necessary for continuous progress to be made during the day of an electrical scan or the evening of a roof scan.

 

?  Professionalism: When we go to a customer?s site, we are professional consultants providing a valuable high-tech service. All thermographers working for Infra-red Analyzers must present mature and professional attitudes and demeanor.

 

?  Personality: Our thermographers must maintain a positive, personable attitude toward everyone they interact with on the job. The thermographer will be relating to a wide variety of individuals, some of which will be extremely pleasant to work with, and a few of which will be rather unpleasant to work with. Good thermographers have good people skills. They are able to interact with and maintain positive relationships with a wide variety of individuals. This is an important part of the service we provide. The impression the thermographer makes on-site is a very big part of the customer?s overall relationship with Infra-red Analyzers. To put this simply, in many instances the thermographer is Infra-red Analyzers as far as that customer is concerned. While the office may make an excellent impression on the customer with the sales and service provided over the phone, if the impression that the thermographer makes on-site is not positive, this can undo all the hard work that the office has put into building a solid relationship with this customer.

 

?  Attention to Detail: We provide our customers with extremely high quality, detailed reports illustrating where their problems are occurring. Our customers feel that these reports are very valuable and we get compliments on our work constantly. The vast majority of the information that the customer receives is generated directly from the thermographer?s work on-site. It is extremely important that the thermographers have a highly developed ability to focus on the details of the testing. This is true when the actual testing is being performed, and when the reports are being generated for the customer. We provide significant support to all of our thermographers to assist them in reaching the level of focus and detailing that is necessary for the customer?s needs. However, some of the most well-meaning candidates do not have the ability to keep track of the details that the job requires. This is probably the most common reason why candidates wash out of our training program.

 

Compensation:  The starting salary for this position is approximately $40,000 + per year. Your actually salary will depend on your qualifications and level of expertise as well as the number of customer service calls you complete. Additional training to gain more advanced knowledge in the field of Infrared Testing is offered to allow our technicians the opportunity to become more proficient and be able to take on more technically complex jobs projects. This will also boost your earning power within the company.

 

Commitment: We feel a strong commitment to our employees. While we cannot guarantee uninterrupted employment, in the past we have made every effort to keep people fully employed during slower work periods. Because of the substantial training time and certification process, we invest many thousands of dollars in each thermographer. We provide a stable, interesting permanent position for the right person. In return, we need a strong commitment from anyone applying for the thermographer job. This is a long-term, full-time position. We are looking for someone to make an honest long-term commitment to the company just as we feel we are making a long-term commitment to the individual.

 

Summary:  Please review the following important points for this position. These represent the minimum qualifications and commitments we are seeking in a new employee:

 

?  We only hire detail-oriented professional individuals committed to producing the highest quality work and customer service.

 

?  Employees must have a reliable car for use, maintain a valid driver?s license with a clean driving record and maintain proper insurance coverage. Employees will be compensated for the use of personal cars for the commute to customer locations at a rate (currently) of $.455/mile.

 

?  Employees must expect to spend a certain amount of time traveling on the road and evenings away from home to accommodate our customers? scheduling requirements. Flexibility to allow for weather changes and emergency customer schedule additions/cancellations is a key component in this aspect.