Franchise Program Manager

Summary

We’re looking for a Franchise Program Manager to build HeyCharge-Operated’s franchise program from zero — starting in Germany, expanding across DACH, and scaling into the rest of Europe. Independent operators will run our charging-as-a-service offering under the HeyCharge brand, in their territory, using our platform, playbook, and back-office. Your job is to make that model real: design the unit economics, sign the first franchisees, get them productive, and tune the model as it scales.

This is a build-from-zero role for a builder, not a manager. We have zero franchisees today and the first deals close on your watch. The European expansion is a contractual deliverable under our €2.5M EIC Accelerator grant — franchise is the capital-efficient model that makes it possible. The person who walks in is the program: you design the economics with the CBDO and counsel, you draft the playbook, you build the recruitment funnel, you sign the contracts, and you sit on-site with the first franchisees in their first month live.

About HeyCharge

HeyCharge makes EV charging work in places it was never supposed to — underground garages, multi-tenant buildings, and any other concrete-and-rebar environment where cellular signal goes to die. Our offline-first SecureCharge platform uses Bluetooth for local session authentication and Zigbee mesh for inter-charger load management and cloud sync. No internet required at the charger; no compromise on reliability or billing accuracy.

We’re Munich-headquartered with team members across Germany, Ukraine, and the US, selling into property managers, utilities, and OEMs across Europe, the US, and Latin America. Our partners include Vonovia (Europe’s largest residential landlord), Easee and Emobi. We’re backed by Y Combinator and EU innovation funding, with a culture that’s Google-rooted on engineering, AI-first and automation-first on operations, and allergic to bureaucracy that doesn’t earn its keep.

Responsibilities

• Franchise program design. Build the unit economics, fee structure, territory model, and performance standards. Partner with the CBDO and CEO on commercial terms; partner with external counsel on the franchise agreement and EU-jurisdiction-specific disclosure regimes.
• Operations playbook. Document the HeyCharge-Operated model (sales motion, installation, technical delivery, billing, support) in a form a franchisee can actually run on day one. Iterate it through the first 5 deals.
• Franchisee recruitment. Build the pipeline. Identify the right kind of regional operator — energy services, established installer companies, real-estate-adjacent service businesses. Qualify, sell, sign.
• Onboarding & ramp. Get the first franchisees productive — training, systems access, first signed customer deals delivered. Be on-site enough to know which five things actually need fixing in the playbook.
• Performance management. Build the franchisee scorecard. Hold partners to the brand standard. Have the hard conversation when a partner isn’t ramping — and the harder one when one needs to be replaced.
• Cross-functional alignment. Work with our delivery, engineering, and marketing teams so what HeyCharge promises centrally matches what franchisees deliver on the ground.
• EIC alignment. Coordinate with our Program Manager on the geographic-expansion deliverables tied to our EIC Accelerator project plan.

Qualifications

• Built-it-before track record. You’ve built a franchise program from zero, OR you’ve operated a successful franchise yourself, OR you’ve built a partner program from scratch in a comparable B2B services context. The specifics matter less than the fact that you’ve actually done it. This is the must-have.
• 8+ years of operating experience — sales, business development, GM-level operations, or P&L ownership. Cumulative time matters less than the depth of your “I have built and run things” track record.
• Entrepreneurial mindset is non-negotiable. You’ve owned a P&L, signed the leases, made the payroll — or you’ve been close enough to ownership that the wiring is the same. We’re not going to teach this.
• Fluent English and conversational-or-better German. First franchisees are in Germany; pan-European prospects work in English.
• Travel-ready. 40–60% travel during the build phase across DACH and into other EU countries; settling to ~30% in steady state.
• Familiarity with the commercial vocabulary of franchise — unit economics, royalties, territory rights, performance clauses, EU jurisdiction-specific disclosure regimes. You don’t need to be a franchise lawyer, but counsel shouldn’t have to explain the basics to you.

Bonus Points

• Direct franchise experience in energy, mobility, real estate services, or B2B field services.
• Existing relationships with German Hausverwaltungen, asset managers, or regional installer networks — useful for both franchisee recruitment and end-customer credibility.
• Multi-country EU experience — you understand how a France-ready franchise model differs from a Germany-ready one.
• Background as a founder, GM, or P&L owner at a regional services business.
• Familiarity with the EIC Accelerator program — we just closed our award and geographic expansion is a contractual deliverable.

Personal Characteristics

• Entrepreneurial mindset: You’ve owned a P&L, signed the leases, made the payroll. You think in terms of unit economics and ramp curves, not budgets and headcount.
• Builder mindset: You create order, structure, and systems from scratch — and you redesign them when reality teaches you what’s wrong.
• Ownership mentality: You take responsibility for the program and the franchisees end-to-end. No hand-offs, no buck-passing.
• Strategic yet hands-on: Equally comfortable designing the franchise economics with the CBDO and personally walking the third prospect through their pro-forma over coffee.
• Hands-on and pragmatic: You’d rather solve a problem than write a memo about it.

Who this role is not for

• If you’ve spent your career in corporate channel-partner programs and never sold a franchise where someone signed a 10-year contract betting their own capital — the muscles are different. We need someone who’s done the harder version of this.
• If you need the franchise agreement finalized before you’ll talk to prospects, this isn’t the right environment. The agreement will evolve with the first 3 deals.
• If your model of “scale” is hiring more people, this is the wrong company. Scale here means more franchisees doing the work — not more headcount under you.
• If you’ve never had a hard conversation with an underperforming partner, you’ll have one in month 4. If that prospect is uncomfortable, this isn’t the role.
• If you want to manage a team before you’ve signed deals, expect to manage yourself for the first 12–18 months. The team comes once the model is proven.

Closing

If you’ve built a franchise program from zero before — or you’ve been the franchisee, signed the leases, and made it work — and the idea of doing the same for a category-defining climate-tech company across Europe sounds like the right next chapter, we’d love to talk.