Why You’ll Love Working With Us Some of the key benefits for the position and employment at Programmed, include: Competitive compensation: Receive an attractive base salary aligned with your experience. Vehicle Allowance or Company Vehicle: Enjoy a fully maintained company hybrid vehicle or vehicle allowance. Shape the future: Join a leading property services business during a period of exciting growth. Exclusive employee perks: Access discounts and benefits with over 600 retailers, including Coles, Woolworths, BWS, Dan Murphy’s, The Good Guys, JB Hi-Fi, BCF, SuperCheap Auto, and many more! Salary sacrifice benefits: Take advantage of novated vehicle leasing, income protection insurance, and other financial perks. Your well-being, our priority: Strong safety culture, generous paid parental leave and access to our Employee Assistance Program, including tailored well-being initiatives designed to support your personal and family needs. About The Opportunity We are seeking a strategic and people-first State Manager to lead our Open Space operations across South Australia and the Northern Territory. In this senior leadership role, you’ll take ownership in the strategic direction of SA/NT delivering safe, high-quality services, managing customer relationships, and building sustainable growth across a diverse portfolio of clients and outdoor assets. Based in Adelaide, SA , this permanent full-time role will lead a multi-skilled, team and oversee the business that delivers a suite of horticultural services, including open space and infrastructure management, general grounds maintenance and sports turf management, landscape construction projects, and vegetation control. This is a pivotal role within our broader Open Space Leadership team across Australia and New Zealand, where you’ll contribute to national strategy, and business performance uplift initiatives. Key Responsibilities Lead the SA/NT Open Space business to achieve agreed performance outcomes, building a high-performance culture of accountability, service excellence and continuous improvement. Set and execute a clear vision for growth across existing and new markets; identify opportunities to expand service offerings and increase customer value. Drive visible safety leadership and governance, ensuring a “zero harm” mindset across all operations, partners and worksites. Oversee end-to-end delivery across grounds and open space services, ensuring quality, compliance, scheduling discipline and consistent KPI performance. Build trusted, senior-level relationships with clients and stakeholders; act as escalation point for issue resolution and proactively identify service improvement opportunities. Own state P&L outcomes; meet and exceed budgets through forecasting, cost control, margin improvement and disciplined reporting. Foster high engagement through strong leadership presence, coaching, performance management, workforce planning and capability development. Manage subcontractors and suppliers to meet service obligations, safety standards, and contractual requirements. Actively participate in the broader Open Space Leadership group across Australia & NZ, contributing to strategic initiatives, operational standards and best-practice sharing. About You You are a commercially astute, values-led leader who thrives in a fast-paced, field-based service environment. You bring a proactive mindset to operational delivery, safety governance, client engagement, and business growth while building strong teams and a culture where people feel supported to perform at their best. You will also have: Proven senior leadership experience in open space/grounds management, landscape services, sports turf, facilities/asset services, or a comparable multi-site operational environment. Demonstrated ability to lead geographically dispersed teams and drive high performance through clear expectations, coaching and accountability. Strong customer relationship management capability, with experience engaging senior stakeholders and delivering measurable service outcomes. Commercial acumen with experience managing budgets, forecasting, cost control and delivering against financial targets. A track record of identifying and delivering growth through organic expansion, service innovation, or business development/tendering. Strong safety leadership credentials, including experience embedding safety governance, contractor management, and compliance discipline. Excellent communication and stakeholder engagement skills (written and verbal), with the ability to influence across operations and support functions. A continuous improvement mindset and the ability to translate strategy into practical, on-the-ground execution. Cultural alignment with our core values: Personal Safety Leadership, Care & Empathy, Customer Service, Diversity, Inclusion & Equality. About Us Programmed is a leading provider of operations and maintenance services across all industry sectors including education, health, infrastructure, manufacturing, transport and mining in Australia and New Zealand. Our Property Services division is an expert maintenance management provider specialising in a variety of services including commercial painting, grounds maintenance, signage solutions, and building fit-out and refurbishment projects. We encourage career development, support flexibility and care about your personal wellbeing and safety. Join the Programmed team today. Work With Us Submit your application today and join us on our mission to build outstanding people, strong customers, and great communities. Our Commitment Programmed and PERSOL supports a workplace culture of zero harm and encourages this in all that we do. Programmed and PERSOL strives for diversity, inclusion and equality of our people. We seek a workforce that is representative of the communities we work in. We encourage people of all cultures, gender, age, sexual orientation or abilities to apply. To learn more about working with Programmed and PERSOL, we encourage you to visit our website.
