Maintenance Technician I

Skills That Drive This Role

Maintenance Technician I at Egret Landing is built around three core skill areas: grounds care, make-ready support, and common area upkeep. If you're someone who notices when a breezeway needs sweeping before anyone asks, or who takes satisfaction in handing off a clean, freshly prepped unit for move-in, this role will suit the way you work. You don't need years of apartment experience to start here. What matters is that you're comfortable with physical, hands-on work and genuinely interested in learning how multifamily maintenance operates from the ground up.

Calabash sits in a coastal stretch of Brunswick County where garden-style communities deal with real environmental pressure: salt air, humidity, pollen, and the kind of debris that accumulates fast around breezeways and pool decks. Keeping common areas presentable here isn't a light task. It's a daily discipline, and the technicians who do it well understand that curb appeal directly affects traffic and lease renewal decisions at any community.

What You'll Be Doing Day to Day

A typical morning might start with a grounds walk: picking up trash, checking trash receptacles around the perimeter, clearing debris from sidewalks and breezeways. From there, you might shift to common area cleaning in the pool area, fitness center, or clubhouse, restocking paper products, mopping, and wiping down glass surfaces. Afternoons often involve make-ready support, helping prep vacant units for incoming residents by assisting with lock changes, light fixture replacements, light painting, or bulb checks throughout the community.

This is also a role where you'll work alongside the broader maintenance team and pick up practical skills as you go. HVAC exposure, pool maintenance basics, and general repair work are all part of the environment, even at the entry level. The structured career path Hawthorne offers means that performance in this role is a direct on-ramp to Maintenance Technician II, where the scope of technical work expands significantly.

• High school diploma or GED required
• Valid driver's license required
• One year of maintenance, repair, or HVAC experience preferred but not required
• Familiarity with yardwork and general facility upkeep is a plus
• Availability for an on-call rotation for after-hours emergencies

What Sets Strong Candidates Apart

The technicians who advance quickly in this type of role aren't necessarily the ones with the most experience on day one. They're the ones who ask questions, stay consistent, and treat resident interactions with the same care they bring to a punch list item. Because Egret Landing is a residential community, the maintenance team is visible to residents daily. Professionalism in those interactions matters as much as technical output.

Hawthorne includes a monthly renewal bonus program on top of hourly pay for this position, which ties individual performance to community retention in a direct way. Benefits include dental, medical and vision coverage, 401k match, paid sick time, pet insurance, and paid parental leave options. The on-call component is real and worth knowing about upfront. After-hours emergency coverage comes with the territory in multifamily maintenance, and candidates who plan for that reality tend to settle into the role more smoothly than those who don't.