Salvage Team Lead

About the role

As a Salvage Team Lead at Reserv, you will be a working leader providing support to a Claims Manager with leadership, salvage operations, and claim technical responsibilities. Leadership responsibilities will include overseeing work completed within the Commercial Total Loss Salvage team and ensuring vehicles move efficiently through the salvage process to final salvage disposition.

We want your background and experience to deliver operational effectiveness, particularly in maximizing salvage recovery, reducing cycle time and storage expense, managing auction and salvage partners, and leveraging technology and analytics to drive better efficiencies and performance. You will serve a critical role with the team, the customers, the client, and our external salvage partners.

This role will balance leadership responsibilities with individual contributor responsibilities, including assisting with complex salvage files, resolving title and documentation issues, managing bid and reserve decisions, reviewing auction performance, and stepping in when volume or business needs require additional support.

You will be responsible for identifying opportunities to increase net salvage proceeds while maintaining compliance, controlling expenses, and delivering a consistent customer and client experience. You will also partner closely with Total Loss, Claims, Operations, Finance, and external vendors to continuously improve the salvage lifecycle.

What you'll do

We need you to do all the things typical to the role:

• Flexibility - you will need to be able to switch from claims handling to coaching and feedback
• Agility- you must have an agile mindset and the ability to pivot from focus to focus in a moment’s notice
• Be consistently dependable in achieving or exceeding goals and overcoming obstacles
• Implement and maintain best practices for claims handling, including claim intake, investigation, evaluation, settlement, and recovery
• Align team with client and customer expectations of the claims process
• Serve as a resource for escalated claims
• Foster a positive work environment, promote teamwork, and encourage professional growth and development
• Attract, hire, retain, and provide a high level of training with the support of the rest of the leadership team
• Prepare and present comprehensive claims reports, metrics, and analyses to clients and customers; advise clients on claim trends and loss mitigation

Who you are

• Highly motivated and growth-oriented - You are impactful and influential, continuously looking for opportunities to improve salvage performance, develop your team, and create measurable business results.
• Salvage professional - You understand the total loss and salvage lifecycle and have a strong track record of success managing salvage operations, auction processes, title requirements, vendor relationships, and vehicle disposition.
• Strong leader - Through formal management experience or a proven track record of peer and project leadership, you have demonstrated the ability to motivate, support, coach, and teach a team while holding people accountable to performance and quality expectations.
• Revenue-minded - You understand that salvage is more than moving vehicles through an auction. You actively look for opportunities to maximize net salvage recovery, improve bid performance, reduce unnecessary expenses, and positively impact the bottom line.
• Tech-oriented - You are excited by the prospect of building a technology-driven salvage organization and have proven experience leveraging systems, automation, dashboards, data, and analytics to improve performance.
• Data-driven - You use data to identify trends, understand auction and vendor performance, uncover root causes, and make informed decisions. You don’t just report the numbers—you use them to determine what needs to change.
• Vendor-focused - You understand the importance of strong relationships with auction facilities, salvage buyers, transport providers, title vendors, and other business partners while maintaining accountability for service, pricing, and performance.
• Passionate - You care about your team, the customer, the client, and the financial outcome of every vehicle.
• Empathetic leader - You exercise empathy and patience toward everyone you interact with while still setting clear expectations and holding yourself and others accountable.
• Sense of urgency - You understand that every day a total loss vehicle remains unresolved can impact storage expense, customer experience, auction performance, and claim cycle time. You move with urgency without sacrificing accuracy or quality.
• Creative - You challenge existing assumptions and find new ways to increase salvage value, improve processes, leverage technology, and use the talents of your team to solve problems.
• Curious - You want to know the whole story. You ask why a vehicle has not sold, why a bid is below expectations, why a title is delayed, or why a vehicle continues to accrue storage—and you work to solve the underlying issue.
• Problem solver - You have the ability to take a deep dive into the details of a salvage file while maintaining focus on the larger financial and operational picture.
• Anti-status quo - You don’t accept “that’s the way we’ve always done it.” You identify opportunities, build solutions, test them, measure the results, and implement what works.
• Decisive - You are comfortable making informed decisions regarding auction strategy, reserve levels, bid approvals, vendor escalation, transportation, and vehicle disposition.
• Operationally focused - You understand the importance of cycle time, storage days, title turnaround, auction performance, inventory aging, bid acceptance, and final closure. You know that strong salvage performance requires disciplined execution.
• Communicative - You are comfortable communicating with adjusters, leadership, clients, customers, vendors, auction partners, and internal stakeholders. You understand when a phone call can solve a problem faster than another email.
• Financially accountable - You understand the connection between salvage proceeds, storage costs, transportation expense, auction fees, administrative costs, and overall claim severity.
• Collaborative - You work across Total Loss, APD, Claims, Finance, Operations, and external partners to make the entire claim lifecycle better—not just the salvage portion of it.
• And did we mention a sense of humor? - Salvage can be complicated enough as it is. You know how to keep the team focused, productive, and engaged while navigating the challenges that come with total loss claims.

Job Duties: 

• Serve as backup/leader when the Manager is out of office
• Responsible for having direct reports
• Responsible for initial onboarding tasks / access and new hire cultural immersion
• SME for first-line questions, escalations, roundtable discussions
• Increased reserve and payment authority with the ability to assist with moderate reviews
• Identify topics and trends to discuss in team Huddles and Elevated Claims Experience Workshops lead/ co-lead by Team Leads, Managers, and other Reserv employees

Qualifications

• Minimum of 5 years of commercial total loss/Salvage experience on point and concentrated in transportation claims adjusting, ideally with:
• • Total Loss/Salvage leadership experience
  • First-party Comp and Collision
  • Third-party Property Damage Liability
  • Experience with Ride Share (or TNC/Livery) is required.
• 2+ years of leadership experience with a preference for experience managing in a remote environment
• Comfortable with technology and the ability to evolve the claims systems and processes to drive better efficiencies and outcomes
• Demonstrated commitment to quality, accuracy, and attention to detail
• Integrity, ethics, and a strong sense of accountability in handling confidential and sensitive information
• Bachelor's degree (lack of one should not stop you from applying if you possess all the other qualifications)
• Active adjuster license: resident-state license where available, otherwise a Designated Home State (DHS) license. Willing to obtain any additional required licenses within 60 days, including state testing.

Benefits

• Generous health-insurance package with nationwide coverage, vision, & dental
• 401(k) retirement plan with employer matching
• Competitive PTO policy – we want our employees fresh, healthy, happy, and energized!
• Generous family leave policy after 8 months of continuous work
• Work from anywhere to facilitate your work life balance
• Apple laptop, large second monitor, and other quality-of-life equipment you may want. Technology is something that should make your life easier, not harder!

At Reserv, we value diversity in backgrounds, perspectives, and life experiences and believe that diversity in viewpoints and critical thinking drives innovation, first-principles thinking, and success. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds and encourage those from all walks of life to apply. If you believe you are a good fit for this role, we would love to hear from you!