Maarten Dekker

Head of Development & Engineering | Creating engineering environments for excellence | Change management

San Francisco Bay Area

About

My added value: Optimizing engineering organizations through shared vision & strategic goals, policy, growth path development and coaching of technical leadership. My leaders show and feel ownership, combined with system thinking and a business attitude such that they leverage an entire R&D organization to great heights. I’m an enthusiastic, ambitious and humorous person that likes to achieve goals together with other people. I try to be visionary and inspirational to others such that they get enthusiastic as well and start building together. This way our goals get achieved fast while the road to success is exciting and spirited as well.

Experience

  • VDL Enabling Technologies Group (ETG) (On-site)
    • Engineering Manager T&D USA - Bay Area
      Mar 2026 - Present · 4 mos

      Supporting New Business and Account Managing to acquire projects for T&D that result in manufacturing in our global factories. Growing and Leading the engineering team in Milpitas (North San Jose, CA)

    • Head of Development & Engineering
      Oct 2023 - Mar 2026 · 2 yrs 6 mos

      Leading the development and engineering teams of a total of about 450 FTE. Systems Engineering, Systems Architecture, Mechanics, Mechatronics, Electronics, Software, Physics and DfX teams. Change management on our engineering organization to ensure we'll reach our vision where our effective and creative engineers design and proto-build the best functional modules in semicon comprising cutting edge technologies and ... have much fun creating it!

  • Dutch Society for Precision Engineering (9 yrs 7 mos)
    • Board Member
      Nov 2018 - Present · 7 yrs 8 mos

      Independent professional branch organization since 1954 for all precision engineers in the Netherlands. Unique community of precision engineers stimulating professional contact and sharing knowledge and experience.

    • Member of the Editorial Board of Mikroniek
      Dec 2016 - Present · 9 yrs 7 mos

      Mikroniek is the magazine of DSPE, containing technical articles, and information about the precision engineering community, that appear about 6 times per year. The Mikroniek is distributed to among people and companies affiliated with precision engineering in and outside of the Netherlands. Copies of more than 1 year old can be downloaded from the website.

  • Philips (5 yrs 5 mos)
    • MRI R&D Leader of Patient Centric Systems
      Apr 2020 - Oct 2023 · 3 yrs 7 mos

      My CoE was responsible for the System Development of all functionalities that belong to Patient Centric Subsystems of our Philips premium MRI Products. My group consisted of Architects, Program & Project Managers, Lead Engineers, Domain Experts and defines, guides and steers the extended global component engineering teams such that together we design the next generations Systems & Components that will become key differentiators for Patients & Staff in the future. The team consists of about 25 highly educated and skilled engineers (BSc-MSc-PhD) in multi-disciplinary engineering fields & expertises, like architecture, system engineering, platforming, MBSE, mechanical, electrical, mechatronics, embedded SW, firmware, RF design, roadmapping, design, UX, workflow, biometric sensing, digital twin + VR/AR, configuration management, reliability, EMC, thermal, regulatory, packaging + logistics, DfX, etc.

    • Group Lead R&D Magnetic Resonance Hardware
      Jun 2018 - Apr 2020 · 1 yr 11 mos

      Guiding a multidisciplinairy Research & Development team of design engineers, lead engineers, project leaders and specialists in the field of Patient Handling, Cooling & Infra of the Philips premium MRI products.

  • Group Leader Mechanical Engineering & Industrial Design Engineering at DEMCON
    Dec 2015 - May 2018 · 2 yrs 6 mos

    Started with 5 engineers, I build up a group of 45 Mechanical Engineers (MSc level), divided over 3 business units; High Tech Systems, Medical Devices and Industrial Systems (Automation). My tasks were amongst others; strategic resource and capacity planning, enabling personal growth (competences), motivate, inspire and lead personnel, managing and improvement of processes.

  • Chairman of the Board of PSV Waterpolo at PSV Zwemmen en Waterpolo
    Mar 2015 - May 2017 · 2 yrs 3 mos

    To build up the water polo division of roughly 250 members. Setting up, directing and leading various committees to realize all the goals that we set for the future. My vision is that together we are strong and get things done. I will do my utmost to bind people to the club and to each other to build up the club to a very united sports club!