Lead Plant Maintenance Mechanic
Location
Chicago, IL
Wage
$29 – $37/hr
Employment Type
Full-time
Posted on October 13, 2026
Location
Chicago, IL
Wage
$29 – $37/hr
Employment Type
Full-time
Posted on October 13, 2026
At Vestis®, we provide uniforms, workplace supplies, and professional cleaning that help businesses simplify their workday and keep their teams safe, confident, and focused on what matters most. The Lead Plant Maintenance Mechanic will lead and direct work in an industrial laundry facility, ensuring the safe and accurate performance of maintenance tasks.
At roughly $33/hr, this posting comes in about 13% below the $38/hr median for welding jobs in Chicago, IL, where the middle half runs $30–$50/hr across 79 postings with published pay. Put another way, it pays more than about 32% of the comparable postings we have wage data for. That gap is worth raising directly — in a market this size there is normally room to negotiate toward the median, particularly if you already hold the certifications the posting asks for.
We're tracking 108 other active welding openings in Chicago, IL right now, from 61 different employers. 50 of them were added in the last week. Across Illinois as a whole we're tracking 368 other active welding openings from 211 employers. A metro this active generally means you have real leverage — employers here are competing for the same welders. Browse every welding job in Chicago, or widen the search to Illinois.
The most active employers in Illinois at the moment, by number of open welding reqs, are Gerber Collision & Glass (18), Staff on Site (13), and Sargent & Lundy (11). 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 $44/hr, Chicago at $38/hr, and Elk Grove Village at $34/hr. Chicago is among them.
Pay figures are medians computed from live postings in the Welding Pros index, not from survey data, and they move as employers post. Lead Plant Maintenance Mechanic figures were last recalculated when this page was built.