Manufacturing Facilities & Engineering Leader

For over 24 years, Dakkota Integrated Systems has delivered excellence through precision-engineered, build-to-order vehicle components from cockpits to fascia assemblies. Our award-winning team combines advanced lean manufacturing, strong product development, and a highly efficient supply chain to meet customer demands with reliability and innovation.

If you're looking for a company that empowers you to grow while driving excellence, collaboration, and innovation to create real impact, we’d love to meet you.

The role

We are seeking a strategic, hands‑on Engineer Facility Manager to lead all engineering, maintenance, and facilities operations across our manufacturing site. This role is accountable for ensuring equipment reliability, optimizing processes, and maintaining facility infrastructure to support safe, efficient, and high‑quality production. The ideal candidate is an innovative, data‑driven leader with a passion for operational excellence and fostering a culture of continuous improvement, collaboration, and technical growth.

This position is based on-site at our Chicago, IL facility and reports to the Plant Manager as part of the Plant Operations team.

What You’ll Do

• Overall Leadership
  • Provide strategic direction and oversight for Engineering, Maintenance, Facilities, ensuring all manufacturing equipment, tooling, processes, and site facilities are effectively maintained and optimized.
  • Lead all activities related to facilities management, including building systems, grounds, utilities, and janitorial services.
• Safety & Compliance
  • Champion a Safety-First culture by ensuring all engineering and maintenance activities comply with safety standards and by driving continuous reduction and elimination of accidents and incidents in line with company objectives.
  • Ensure full compliance with company emergency evacuation guidelines and all applicable regulatory requirements.
• Department Management
  • Manage departmental staffing, performance, budgets, KOIs, and resource planning to meet or exceed organizational expectations.
  • Oversee quoting activities, ensuring accurate and timely cost estimates.
  • Conduct employee performance evaluations and establish clear roles, responsibilities, and expectations for all team members.
  • Build and strengthen engineering and maintenance capability by developing skills, fostering teamwork, and driving effective communication across teams and departments.
• Maintenance & Operations
  • Ensure the execution of all preventive maintenance activities, manual operations drills, and equipment readiness routines.
  • Maintain the technical skill base required to support facility operations and ongoing production needs.
• Launch Readiness & Program Execution
  • Lead cross‑functional teams through the Launch Readiness process as defined in BOS procedures.
    • Schedule and facilitate meetings with Production, Manufacturing Engineering, Controls Engineering, Materials, Quality, Program Management, and Product Engineering.
    • Review all deliverables in detail, verify progress through physical validation, and escalate or support as needed to drive accountability and ensure readiness.
    • Provide coaching, guidance, and hands-on leadership to remove barriers and ensure successful program execution.
  • Ensure full departmental engagement in new program development, including process design, tooling, capital planning, equipment setup/debug, and validation to meet customer specifications, cycle times, and quality requirements.
• Oversee Engineering Change Management for new and existing programs, ensuring alignment on quoting, costing, planning, and execution of changes.
• Product & Process Development
  • Drive product and process development activities to ensure production feasibility within ergonomics, safety, timing, budget, cost, performance, and quality requirements.
  • Strengthen Launch Readiness through lessons learned and continuous improvement integration.
• Lead or participate in CI initiatives to enhance efficiency, reliability, throughput, and cost performance across the plant.
• Keep team members informed on emerging technologies, tools, and best practices that improve project execution and operational performance.
• Documentation & Additional…