Company description

Up Top Acres is an urban farming company managing farms and gardens for commercial real estate nationally, with our operational hub in the DMV. We grow food where people work, connecting building tenants to the source of their food and creating green space in the heart of the city.

Job description

You’ll own the hands-on work and the quality of Up Top Acres’ landscaping portfolio. That breaks into a few areas:

• Hands-on landscaping. The core of the role. You’ll do much of the fieldwork yourself, solo or directing a crew on bigger jobs. That work includes perennial and seasonal plantings across exterior sites (in-ground and planters) with weekly or bi-weekly maintenance for plant health and aesthetic standards, monthly green roof maintenance to hold roof health and client standards while establishing more biologically productive species, and weekly interior plant care.
• Sustainable landscaping leadership. You’ll push UTA into genuinely more sustainable landscaping, building out an environmentally-driven plan grounded in natives, perennials, and lower-input methods. You’ll solve horticultural and landscape-infrastructure challenges as they come up and set a standard above the industry norm.
• Nursery and plant stock. You’ll grow our plant material, potting up plugs and raising them to size, so the vertical runs on healthier, more cost-effective, more sustainable plants over time.
• Directing crews on team days. On green roof days and bigger jobs, farmers from our operations team will work alongside you, typically a couple of days a month. You’ll direct that work, setting the pace and holding the standard. You own the planning and prep that make those days productive, even though the crew’s day-to-day management sits elsewhere.
• Planning, procurement, and logistics. You’ll own the planning, purchasing, scheduling, and prep that keep the vertical and its workdays running, making sure the right plants, materials, and tools are ready when and where the work happens.
• Systems and standards. You’ll turn ad-hoc fieldwork into documented, repeatable plans, processes, and standards that keep the portfolio consistent and let it scale, with a focus on lean, sustainable choices.
• Supporting operations. Beyond landscaping, you’ll be a flexible resource across the operation, supporting F&G ops wherever the crew needs hands. You’ll work closely with the Director of Operations to schedule work, hold standards, and keep them current on status, upcoming needs, and anything affecting the schedule or budget. You’ll log crew performance on your workdays, flag what needs addressing, and pull strong photos from your sites for client communications

Key Success Metrics

• Client-facing quality. Sites are always left looking up to standard, and issues get handled before a client flags them.
  A more sustainable service line. The vertical measurably moves toward natives, perennials, and lower-input practices, and we’re doing this work better and greener than the industry norm.
• A productive, healthy nursery. A natives-based plant stock is developed and maintained, giving the vertical healthier, more sustainable, more cost-effective plant material over time.
• Consistent adherence to our systems. Calendar followed and updated, visits logged completely and thoroughly, protocols followed and improved as needed.
• Systems built to scale. Landscaping plans, processes, and standards are documented and repeatable, built on lean and sustainable plant and operational choices.
• Crews and time run well on workdays. The days farmers work alongside you are planned, productive, and up to standard, and crew time is used efficiently.
• Clear, current communication with operations and leadership. The Director of Operations always knows site status, what needs attention, and how workdays went, and leadership gets a reliable monthly read on the vertical, with nothing surfacing as a surprise.

What We’re Looking For

• Strong hands-on landscaping or production-farming background. You know the work and can do it well yourself.
• An understanding of mid-Atlantic natives, perennials, and sustainable plant care, or the horticultural depth to get there fast. This is central to the role, not a nice-to-have.
• A researcher and problem-solver. You can identify, research, and work out practical solutions to the horticultural and landscape-infrastructure challenges that come up, and you’re excited to push a service line toward doing things better.
• A feel for what clients want. Much of the work is solo or directing a crew, so you need to know, or quickly figure out, what a property manager will notice and what “up to standard” looks like.
• Organizational instincts and a bias toward systems. The end goal is documented, repeatable process, so someone who naturally builds order out of chaos.
• Comfort directing a crew. Setting the pace, holding standards, and keeping a crew productive and positive through a long day, even without being anyone’s day-to-day manager.
• A flexible, utility mindset. You’re happy to flex across the operation and support F&G ops when that’s where the day goes, not just stay in your lane.
• Reliability and follow-through. On a small team, when you say a site is handled, it needs to be handled.
• Comfortable with Google Workspace, including Calendar.
• High energy and positivity
• Excitement about bringing more and better green space to commercial real estate.

Requirements

• Valid driver’s license required to fulfill job duties and work authorization.
• Comfort working on a roof and ability to lift 50 lbs comfortably and repeatedly.

Compensation

this position is: salaried, varies DOE, $60,000.00 - $70,000.00

Application instructions

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Deadline

December 09, 2026