Hardware Operations Specialist

About the Role

BusPlanner is scaling fast, and our hardware business is scaling with it. GPS, ridership, tablets, cameras, RFID, and every other piece of connected vehicle hardware we put on a school bus — every one of these involves a customer expecting a clean rollout, a vendor we have to hold accountable, and a coordination chain that has zero room for things falling through the cracks.

The Hardware Operations Specialist owns the operational engine behind every hardware customer we have. You will report into Projects and act as the single point of accountability for how connected vehicle hardware gets ordered, installed, trained, supported, and grown — across both new and existing customers. You will also own our relationships with the vendors who make this hardware possible.

The Sales team sells it. The Product team builds the software. You make sure the hardware actually gets to the customer, gets installed, the customer is trained on it, and stays running — on time, on schedule, and with no surprises. This is a uniquely high-trust, high-leverage role. The customer’s first impression of BusPlanner’s hardware business runs through you.

What You’ll Own

Customer Deployment Execution

• Order-to-go-live, end to end. Own every hardware customer engagement from order placement through go-live and stabilization.
• Install coordination. Schedule and coordinate every install with the customer, the vendor, and any third-party installers. Confirm site readiness, hardware delivery, install windows, and post-install validation.
• Customer training delivery. Run or coordinate customer training for every hardware deployment.

Vendor Coordination

• Day-to-day vendor execution. Hold all hardware vendors to their commitments on lead times, install quality, support response, and warranty during the heavy install months. Push back firmly when SLAs slip. Escalate cleanly when needed.
• Order management. Place, track, and reconcile every hardware order. Confirm pricing, lead times, and delivery. Catch discrepancies before they become customer problems.

Pipeline Visibility and Reporting

• Source of truth. Be the source of truth for the state of every hardware deployment in-flight. New customer orders, install schedules, training calendars, vendor escalations, customer issues — you know the numbers and the status, always.
• Risk surfacing. Flag risk early to leadership. Hardware delays, install slips, vendor issues, customer escalations — leadership should never be surprised by a hardware problem because you saw it first and raised it.
• Reporting cadence. Run a clean weekly operations review covering hardware deployments in flight, vendor performance, customer escalations, and what’s coming next.

Sales and Customer Success Enablement

• Internal hardware expert. Be the go-to person across BusPlanner for anything hardware. Train Account Executives and Customer Success Managers on the hardware portfolio so they can speak intelligently in deals and renewals.
• Pitch materials and references. Build and maintain hardware pitch decks, deployment timeline references, pricing references, and customer-facing FAQs. Keep them current as the portfolio evolves.

Pre-Sales and Pilot Management

• Solutions consulting on complex deals. When Sales is working a complex hardware deal, jump into the pre-sales process. Speak intelligently to prospective customers about our hardware, what deployment looks like, what timelines are realistic, and what the install resourcing model is.
• Pilot scoping and execution. Scope the pilot, coordinate the pilot install, run the customer through what success looks like, and convert the pilot cleanly into a full deployment. Same person who runs the pilot is the same person who’ll run the full install — that continuity is the win.

The DNA We’re Hiring For

This is the part our CEO cares most about. Skills can be sharpened. DNA can’t. We’re looking for:

• A killer work ethic. You out-work the room without being asked. You finish what you start.
• Coachable. You take feedback like a gift. You adjust quickly and you don’t get defensive.
• A good attitude. You bring energy into the room. You make the team better just by being on it.
• Ownership mentality. If it’s broken, you fix it — even if it’s not technically your job.
• High urgency and intensity. You move with urgency. You operate at high intensity. You don’t drift, and you don’t let the team drift.
• Diplomatic firmness. You can push a vendor without burning the relationship and push a customer without losing the deal. That balance is rare and we screen for it.

• Hardware deployment experience. Demonstrated experience coordinating hardware rollouts at scale — ideally in connected vehicle, telematics, fleet IoT, or onboard technology. Geotab, Samsara, Verizon Connect, Zonar, Lytx, Holman, or similar backgrounds are a strong fit. Pupil transportation experience is a meaningful plus but not required.
• Project and program coordination. Comfortable running 20-50 active threads at once across customers, vendors, and internal teams. Power-user level skill with project tracking tools (Asana, Monday, Smartsheet, ClickUp, or similar) and ticketing systems (Zendesk, Jira, or similar).
• Vendor management track record. Real experience holding third-party vendors accountable — placing orders, reading SOWs, pushing back on missed timelines, escalating cleanly, and building relationships where your tickets get prioritized.
• Customer-facing polish. Calm under pressure. Strong written and verbal communication. Able to run a confident customer kickoff, deliver a training session, handle a frustrated district director, and brief leadership without drama.
• Detail orientation. Meticulous, detail-oriented, and allergic to ambiguity. You catch the gaps no one else sees and you don’t let things slip through — especially not into a customer’s go-live.
• Operating tempo. Comfort working at a pace that matches a company in growth mode, with shifting priorities and high stakes — and the judgment to know when to flex versus when to hold the line. Comfort with the seasonal rhythm of the role: heavy execution in peak season, strategic and enablement work in the off-season.

• Competitive salary and performance-based bonuses.
• Full health and wellness benefits.
• Flexible work hours and remote-friendly setup.
• Modern operations tooling and the autonomy to shape how the hardware deployment pipeline runs.
• A collaborative team culture focused on flawless customer deployments and being a true partner to the districts we serve.