Template Technician (Dimensional Stone)

DTK Stone Works, Inc. — Wheeling, IL

Full-time | Field-based, out of our Wheeling shop

Reports to: Operations Manager/Owner

Company vehicle provided. Job sites across Northern Illinois, Southern Wisconsin, and Northwest Indiana. Overnight travel comes up occasionally. We talk it through with you when it does.

About the Role

DTK Stone Works has fabricated and installed stone since 2005. We run a 20,000-square-foot shop in Wheeling, doing residential kitchens and baths plus commercial work — offices, hospitality, retail, bar tops, reception desks, and multi-unit projects. As a Template Technician, you own the measure. You go to the site, capture the real field conditions, and produce the digital template the whole job gets built from. Every cut we make downstream comes from your file. An accurate template means a clean install. A bad one costs a slab and a callback.

Your day starts at 7 am. Your appointments come from the scheduler, so you know your route. Some mornings start in the shop — finishing drawings from the day before, or squaring something away with the guys on the floor before you head out. Then you're in the field. Saturdays come up when the workload calls for it. When something's off track, you catch it and fix it before anyone has to ask.

Compensation

Base salary: $65,000 – $80,000, depending on your field experience and where your drafting skills are when you start.

Incentive: up to $500 per month, paid quarterly. It's tied to two things — the throughput target you set with your Operations Manager, and your remake rate. Hit your throughput and keep template-error remakes under 1.5%, and you earn it. Miss the accuracy number and the volume bonus doesn't pay, no matter how many jobs you ran. Fast is worth nothing here if it isn't right.

Year one, hitting targets: $71,000 – $86,000.

This is a templater's base with a drafter's scope. You're not handing off a field file for someone else to finish — you take it through CAD, out to the client, and into the shop. That's why the range starts where it does.

What We Offer

• A real path to Measure Lead. We're building toward someone who owns measure — takes the complex jobs himself, sets the standard the other techs work to, and answers for how the department executes. If you have the technical depth for hard work and you want more than a truck route, that's the seat. It's not a someday promise. It's the reason this role is scoped the way it is.

• No layers between you and the decision. You report to the Operations Manager and the owner. When the schedule doesn't work, or a process is broken, you say it to the people who can change it, and it changes that week. We're 25 people. There's nobody here to file a request with.

• The truck, the fuel, and the gear are on us. Company vehicle for every route, gas on a company card, and a tablet in the field. You run the Laser Products LT-2D3D. Nothing comes out of your pocket, and you're not fighting equipment to do your job.

• Medical, dental, vision, and life insurance after 90 days. Paid holidays and PTO. Retirement with a match up to 3% — plenty of shops our size don't offer one at all.

• Field Measurement — You capture the real conditions at the job site, not the ones on the plan. We run the Laser Products LT-2D3D, and if you've templated on it, you'll be productive in your first week. You also verify by hand. A level and a tape measure are not optional — the machine tells you what's there, and you confirm whether it's right.

• Drafting and File Prep — You take your own field data through CAD and build the drawing. It goes out as a PDF for the client to review and sign. The signed approval is what the shop cuts from, and the DXF stays with the job file the whole way through. You own that chain end to end. As we grow, this scope may split — if it does, you'll have a say in how.

• Job Site Readiness — You judge whether a job is actually ready before you template it. Cabinets out of level, missing faucet or cooktop specs, access problems, a wall that isn't going to work — you call it out while you're standing there. Nothing gets discovered at install that you could have seen at measure.

• Schedule Ownership — You read the schedule three days to a week out and tell the scheduler what's real. If three jobs in one day won't work, or you need drawing time, you say so early. That's how the shop stays level-loaded instead of buried one week and idle the next.

• Customer Contact — You call ahead before every appointment. On site, you answer questions about the stone and the base it's going on. Anything past that goes to sales. You're the face of DTK at that address.

• Shop Handoff — Everything you measured is in Action Flow within 24 hours: the drawing, the specs, the site conditions, and anything the installers need to know before they show up.

You're measured on outcomes, not hours.

• Remakes caused by template error stay under 1.5% of jobs you measure.

• Clients get their CAD to review within 24 to 48 hours of the measure. Every time.

• You complete the schedule you committed to, and weekly throughput hits the target set with your Operations Manager.

• Every job you measure is complete in Action Flow within 24 hours.

• Every appointment runs inside its scheduled window, with a call ahead.

• No install is delayed by a site condition you saw and didn't report.

• The shop never waits on your drawings — no job sits held for a missing file.

• You measure twice. Not because someone told you to, but because you've seen what happens when a number is wrong and nobody caught it.

• You speak up early. When a job site is a problem or a week's schedule won't work, you say so days ahead — not the morning of, and not after the stone is cut.

• You work alone without going quiet. Most of your day you're the only DTK person at that address, and the shop still knows what you know.

• You read all the way to the end before you act. Put PERISCOPE in your subject line — or if you're applying through a job board and can't set one, make it your first line. That's how we know you did.

• Three to five years of templating or countertop field work. You know what a bad cabinet run looks like before you put a tool on it.

• AutoCAD experience strongly preferred. If your field work is strong and your drafting isn't there yet, we'll train you.

• You read architectural drawings, and your geometry is solid. Kitchen and bath cabinet layout is familiar ground.

• Valid driver's license and a clean driving record over the last five years. You'll be in our truck across three states. Must pass a drug test. High school diploma or technical education.

• When something goes wrong on your job — and it will — you own it, you tell us, and you tell us early. We'd rather lose twenty minutes than a slab.

DTK Stone Works is a family-owned and operated custom stone fabrication and installation company in Wheeling, IL. We serve high-end residential, multi-unit residential, and commercial projects across Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana. Since 2004, we’ve worked closely with designers, contractors, builders, developers, and homeowners to bring their concepts to life, with quality, customer service, and our people always first.