Hiring a Chief Operating Officer (COO) for a field-based services company is one of the most consequential decisions a private equity sponsor can make. In these businesses, operational leadership is the engine that powers value creation. The right hire can professionalize operations, accelerate integration, and unlock growth. The wrong hire can create costly misalignment, delay transformation, and stall exits.

Despite these high stakes, sponsors often approach COO searches as if they were any other executive search. They are not. Field services operating environments are uniquely complex, and the COO role within them requires a blend of skills few candidates possess. Sourcing, assessing, and aligning hiring teams on the right candidate profile demands a level of strategic rigor that search partners should bring to the table. Drawing on our experience leading dozens of successful field services COO searches during the recent investment boom in distributed services businesses, this playbook explores what makes these roles so challenging, how to avoid common missteps, and how a structured search process can de-risk the hire and accelerate value creation.

What We Mean by Field-Based Services

Field-based services companies deliver work at the customer’s site—installing commercial HVAC systems, maintaining fleets of equipment, performing residential pest control, or servicing industrial assets. They typically operate large distributed teams of technicians or crews and rely on intricate scheduling, logistics, and customer support systems to succeed. Many follow a route-based model (recurring scheduled visits) or a project-based model (one-time installations or repairs), and some blend both.

This makes operational leadership especially challenging. COOs must orchestrate performance across dispersed teams, physical assets, and fast-moving service schedules while driving growth and integration across locations.

Hiring a COO for field-based services requires a sector-specific lens. B2B and B2C operating models are fundamentally different, and COOs must be equipped to navigate each. In B2B field services, success often depends on rigorous route optimization, margin discipline, and managing complex client SLAs. In B2C models, speed, quality of experience, and brand consistency are paramount.

Many field services companies also pursue roll-up strategies, layering on acquisitions to build scale. COOs in these environments must be able to integrate quickly, bring structure to ambiguity, and lead through rapid change.

The Role of a COO in Field-Based Services

In field-based services companies, the COO is the operational architect of the business. They are responsible for ensuring the business can perform reliably today while building the systems and culture needed to scale tomorrow.

A field services COO typically:

• Owns core functions such as field operations, scheduling, logistics, supply chain, customer service, and safety/compliance
• Partners closely with sales and finance leaders to align operational execution with growth and profitability targets
• Leads post-merger integration in rollup models, unifying systems and teams from acquired companies
• Balances near-term performance management with long-term operational transformation

Successful COOs must manage tactical execution while simultaneously driving bigger-picture change. They must run the business while changing the business. Unlike functional executives, COOs oversee multiple critical functions at once and often work through complex matrix structures where influence matters as much as authority. They must bring credibility to front-line teams, operational rigor to systems and processes, and strategic vision to leadership teams.

These leaders often sit at the nexus of operations and sales, making strong cross-functional partnerships essential. They are expected to deliver results quickly without sacrificing scalability or cultural alignment.

What Makes These Roles High-Stakes

The COO role in field services is not just operational—it is central to the investment thesis. Sponsors often acquire these businesses specifically to scale them through geographic expansion, route density, or acquisition integration. The COO sits at the center of all of that.

Operational models matter. Project-based work, like commercial HVAC installations, differs significantly from route-based models like quarterly maintenance. Some COOs are stronger in one than the other, and understanding this balance is crucial. Misalignment can lead to missed milestones, cash burn, or a failure to professionalize in time to hit an exit window. A well-chosen COO can compress value creation timelines by years.

These leaders must execute under pressure while navigating ambiguity. They are expected to move quickly, build infrastructure as they go, and deliver results without losing momentum.

Two Archetypes of Field Services COOs

Based on our experience leading hundreds of executive searches, we often see two primary COO archetypes emerge in field-based services:

1. The P&L Leader: A direct-line operator with regional experience, often deeply tied to performance metrics and front-line execution. They are comfortable managing budgets, driving daily performance, and scaling in familiar contexts.
2. The Operations Transformation Athlete: A cross-functional leader skilled in innovation, integration, and orchestrating change across functions and geographies. They bring a toolkit for driving transformation, professionalizing operations, and building scalable systems.

Either profile can succeed in the right context. However, we often recommend the transformation athlete profile for PE-backed roll-up environments, where COOs must shift companies from founder-led or regionally siloed models into scalable, centralized platforms. These leaders can drive structure, rigor, and scale without losing speed.

Avoiding Common Hiring Missteps

Sponsors often default to looking only at direct competitors. This can limit the talent pool and create non-compete headwinds. Broadening the search to adjacent industries and operating models can uncover leaders with transferable playbooks who aren’t constrained by legacy norms.

Another frequent oversight is underestimating the integration challenge. Field services COOs must often unify different systems, cultures, and performance expectations quickly post-close. Without experience managing integrations, even strong operators can falter.

Compensation is another lever that can make or break a search. COOs should have meaningful upside linked to revenue and EBITDA improvements. Tying compensation to growth ensures the hire is aligned to the investment thesis and filters out steady-state managers who lack a scale mindset.

PierceGray’s Differentiated Process

PierceGray has built a search process specifically designed to de-risk high-stakes operating searches like these.

We align upfront on the search strategy, define what success looks like, and make our candidate pipeline fully transparent. Our upfront strategy document anchors the search, ensuring sponsors, portfolio leaders, and interviewers are aligned on must-haves, success metrics, and evaluation criteria from day one.

We use structured interview scorecards tied directly to this strategy. Even interviewers who are only lightly involved can assess candidates against the same objective criteria. This reduces bias, accelerates alignment, and helps surface consensus quickly.

Throughout the process, sponsors receive transparent pipeline updates and data-driven recommendations for realignment if the market is not yielding the right profiles. This keeps searches efficient and strategic, even under tight timelines.

This structured, transparent approach gives sponsors confidence they are seeing the full market and objectively calibrating on the right leadership profile.

A Proven, Step-by-Step Framework for Taking the Risk Out of COO Searches

Hiring a field services COO is not about finding the flashiest résumé. It is about finding the right operator for a highly specific context. These leaders will shape how quickly a portfolio company can scale, integrate acquisitions, and meet exit timelines.

PierceGray has refined a proven approach for these searches, grounded in hundreds of successful placements. The framework below outlines the critical steps to de-risk your next COO search.

1. Define the operating model and success metrics

Document whether the business is primarily project-based, route-based, or a blend, and identify the operational KPIs that define success (margin expansion, geographic growth, service-level consistency, and so on). A precise operating thesis prevents misalignment later in the process.

2. Pinpoint the right leadership archetype

Align stakeholders on which leadership profile best fits the business stage and strategy. Decide if you need a proven P&L operator to drive consistency and throughput or a transformation-focused leader to build structure, integrate acquisitions, and scale quickly. Establishing this up front keeps the search calibrated and prevents late-stage disagreements.

3. Expand the talent universe beyond direct competitors

Resist the temptation to limit sourcing to direct competitors. That approach can shrink your candidate pool and create avoidable non-compete hurdles. Instead, look across adjacent industries and operating models to surface leaders with transferable playbooks and the agility to thrive in new contexts.

4. Align stakeholders early and often

Misaligned expectations are one of the fastest ways to derail a COO search. Create an upfront search strategy document, use structured interview scorecards, and hold recurring calibration check-ins to keep boards, sponsors, and portfolio leadership on the same page. This alignment also speeds decision-making once finalists emerge.

5. Structure compensation to drive growth

Design the offer to attract scale-minded leaders. Include meaningful variable compensation tied to growth and EBITDA milestones so incentives align with the investment thesis. Candidates focused only on steady-state management often self-select out at this stage, which is the point.

6. Test for post-merger integration capability

In roll-up environments, operational excellence alone is not enough. Evaluate candidates on their ability to integrate acquired teams, unify systems, and stabilize performance during periods of disruption. Integration experience is often the strongest predictor of success in field-based services.

The Bottom Line: Build for Scale, Not Just Stability

COO searches in field-based services are complex, but they do not have to be risky. The key is to replace guesswork with structure, build clarity on what success looks like, and create alignment before candidates ever enter the pipeline.

PierceGray’s approach does exactly that. We combine upfront strategy, transparent pipelines, and structured evaluation tools to deliver operational leaders who can scale under pressure. With the right framework and the right partner, sponsors can turn a high-stakes hire into a value-creation inflection point.

Ready to start your next COO search? We are. Let’s connect.

About the Experts Behind This Playbook

This playbook was developed based on the experience of PierceGray Partners Thomas (Tom) Lafferty and Demi Hutchinson, who have led dozens of successful COO searches in field-based services.

Tom Lafferty leads PierceGray’s Chicago office and specializes in operations, supply chain, commercial, and transformational leadership searches for both investor-backed and public companies. Prior to PierceGray, Tom was a management consultant with Deloitte and EY, where he led transformation and operations improvement engagements in the energy and industrial sectors. He began his career with ExxonMobil in engineering, operations, and finance roles, and holds a BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering from Bucknell University and an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management.

Demi Hutchinson has spent more than a decade at PierceGray and brings deep expertise in industrial businesses and field-based services. She holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue and began her career at GE in manufacturing and supply chain, gaining firsthand experience in building operational rigor at scale. Demi now focuses on executive searches that require cross-functional leadership and complex integration, particularly in roll-up environments where COO impact is most critical.

Their combined experience, spanning frontline operations, post-merger integration, and executive search, gives them a rare vantage point on what makes field services COOs succeed or fail in private equity settings.