R&D Senior Lab Technician
Location
Woodridge, IL
Wage
$70,000 – $80,000/yr
Employment Type
Full-time
Posted on September 9, 2026
Location
Woodridge, IL
Wage
$70,000 – $80,000/yr
Employment Type
Full-time
Posted on September 9, 2026
The R&D Senior Lab Technician supports engineering by conducting tests to evaluate and validate product designs while ensuring a safe work environment. This role involves hands-on testing, prototype evaluation, data collection, and laboratory operations for commercial vehicle components and systems.
At roughly $36/hr, this posting sits about 20% above the $30/hr median for welding jobs across Illinois — toward the top of a $25–$38/hr middle band drawn from 276 postings with published pay. Put another way, it pays more than about 70% of the comparable postings we have wage data for. Pay that far above local median usually comes attached to something: a harder cert requirement, travel, night shift, or overtime that isn't really optional. Worth establishing which before you accept.
Woodridge, IL currently has 7 other active welding openings besides this one, spread across 5 employers. 4 of them were added in the last week. Across Illinois as a whole we're tracking 373 other active welding openings from 232 employers. That's enough local activity to be worth comparing two or three offers before committing. Browse every welding job in Woodridge, or widen the search to Illinois.
The most active employers in Illinois at the moment, by number of open welding reqs, are S&C Electric Company (18), Gerber Collision & Glass (14), and Staff on Site (13). Volume like that usually means either a genuine expansion or a staffing agency working several client sites — worth knowing which before you apply.
Within Illinois, the best-paying metros we track by median hourly rate are Downers Grove at $46/hr, Chicago at $36/hr, and Addison at $32/hr. If you can relocate or commute, that spread is worth factoring in.
Pay figures are medians computed from live postings in the Welding Pros index, not from survey data, and they move as employers post. R&D Senior Lab Technician figures were last recalculated when this page was built.