Director of Engineering

Dober has been creating chemistry that matters for over 65 years. Privately held and headquartered in the Chicago suburbs, we serve customers ranging from Fortune 100 companies to your local farms. Our products are applied in industries ranging from industrial water treatment, environmental remediation, corrosion inhibition, critical cleaning, and to the agricultural chemistry. We win on deep application knowledge and technical differentiation — and our growth is accelerating.

Keeping pace with that growth requires building — more capacity, better processes, smarter systems, and the engineering infrastructure to support all of it. That is where this role comes in.

We are investing to expand and improve manufacturing capabilities, optimizing our production footprint, and deploying new technology across our operations. Right now, we do not have a dedicated engineering function at the corporate level to own it — and we are ready to build one.

Ops 2030 is our multi-year commitment to operational excellence — proactive, data-driven, lean, and technology-enabled. This role owns the engineering backbone of that transformation. You are not embedded in a single plant. You are the engineering capability the whole organization draws on.

If you are someone who wants to build an engineering function from the ground up — with real capital to deploy, meaningful projects to execute, and leadership that values engineering as a strategic asset — this is a rare opportunity to do exactly that.

The capital plan is the engineering roadmap for the company. You own it — not just the tracking of it, but the thinking behind it.

• Own the company's multi-year capital strategy, planning, and execution across all manufacturing sites — developing the annual capital budget, prioritizing spend across competing needs, and ensuring investments are sequenced to deliver maximum operational impact.
• Lead capital justification: develop techno-economic models that evaluate process alternatives, quantify ROI, and provide the analytical foundation for investment decisions — from equipment upgrades and capacity expansions to new process technology and automation.
• Build and maintain a live capital project portfolio — scope, cost, schedule, status, and risk — that gives leadership real-time visibility into where capital is deployed and what it is delivering.
• Build and maintain a portfolio visibility dashboard and OEE measurement framework across all sites — connecting capital investment to operational outcomes that provide insight on where to focus next.

Capital plans are only as good as the projects that execute them. You own execution — from scope development through commissioning and handoff.

• Lead major capital projects end-to-end: scope definition, engineering design, contractor and vendor selection, construction management, commissioning, and operational handoff.
• Develop and maintain P&IDs, process flow diagrams, equipment specifications, and engineering drawings for all capital projects and process modifications — maintaining an accurate, current plant documentation library across all sites.
• Implement a stage-gate project governance framework — structured intake, scope review, design review, and go/no-go checkpoints that ensure capital is delivered on time and on budget.
• Perform core process engineering calculations independently — heat transfer, mass balance, fluid dynamics, and equipment sizing — that support capital decisions, equipment specifications, and process troubleshooting without relying on outside consultants for routine engineering work.
• Specify and evaluate process equipment — reactors, heat exchangers, pumps, mixers, separation systems — with enough depth to challenge vendor proposals, validate sizing assumptions, and make informed buy vs. modify vs. replace recommendations.

Growing fast is not just about building new capacity. It is about making what we make today better — with tighter controls, better equipment, and more consistent processes.

• Identify and lead engineering solutions to recurring operational bottlenecks — separating equipment and process problems from people…