Software Engineer V – Principal Engineer $120,000 - $160,000 Missoula/Hybrid/Remote

ELM Utility Services, is a team of over 1900 employees nationwide. We are seeking highly experienced Principal Engineer who combines deep technical expertise with strong ownership, systems thinking, and leadership through influence.   We are especially interested in – but do not necessarily require - engineers who understand how to build mobile applications around real business domains, field workflows, and operational Experience designing mobile solutions that reflect the way field teams actually work is highly valuable.  We value engineers who think beyond individual features, take ownership of outcomes, collaborate across teams, and help evolve scalable, reliable platforms that support the company's long-term growth and mission. At ELM, our mission is important — helping keep our communities safe by reducing accidents involving underground utility infrastructure. Our engineering teams design, build, and operate enterprise-class software that powers critical operational and corporate workflows across the organization. As a Software Engineer at ELM, you are not just writing code- you are helping shape the systems that dispatch work, process field data, support regulatory compliance, improve operational efficiency, and ultimately contribute to public safety. We value engineers who think beyond individual features, take ownership of outcomes, collaborate across teams, and help evolve scalable, reliable platforms that support the company's long-term growth and mission.  Starting wages for this position will be $120,000-$160,000 depending on experience.

Our Total Rewards Package Includes:

• Optional benefits like Medical, Dental, Vision, Life, Disability, FSA, H.S.A., and Teladoc.
• Company Paid Life Insurance
• Paid-Time Off (PTO) for vacation and sick time
  
• 6 Paid Holidays
• 401(k) plan
• Bonuses for milestone anniversaries
• Competitive pay based on experience
• Long history of stable employment and promoting from within
• Opportunity to lead and modernize production systems with meaningful operational impact 

Roles & Responsibilities: 

• Lead large-scale technical initiatives and epics from concept through deployment and operational support. 
• Provide technical leadership across multiple teams and domains, helping drive architectural consistency and long-term maintainability. 
• Mentor and coach engineers across the organization, elevating technical capability and engineering maturity. 
• Collaborate with Product Managers, Team Leads, Architects, and Executive Leadership to align technical solutions with business outcomes. 
• Design and implement scalable, resilient, and observable distributed systems and integrations. 
• Drive improvements in engineering standards, SDLC practices, CI/CD pipelines, testing strategies, and operational excellence. 
• Champion best practices around performance, security, compliance, resiliency, and maintainability. 
• Participate in technical design reviews, backlog elaboration, and cross-team solutioning efforts. 
• Translate complex technical concepts into clear communication appropriate for both technical and non-technical audiences. 
• Identify systemic issues, technical debt, and architectural risks, and help lead pragmatic modernization efforts. 
• Contribute hands-on code and technical implementation where appropriate. 
• Support incident response, root cause analysis, and continuous improvement activities for production systems. 
• Promote a culture of ownership, accountability, collaboration, and continuous learning. 

Education and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field, or equivalent practical experience. 
• 12+ years of professional software engineering experience preferred. 
• Demonstrated success designing and delivering enterprise-scale applications and platforms. 
• Expert-level proficiency in modern software development practices and object-oriented programming languages such as C# and .NET. 
• Strong experience with modern web application development using TypeScript, JavaScript, Angular and/or React. 
• Deep understanding of API design, distributed systems, asynchronous processing, and integration patterns. 
• Strong experience with relational databases and SQL Server preferred. 
• Experience with cloud-native technologies and platforms such as Azure, containerization, CI/CD pipelines, and observability tooling. 
• Strong understanding of software architecture, scalability, security, resiliency, and performance optimization. 
• Experience working in Agile/Scrum product delivery environments. 
• Excellent communication, collaboration, and organizational skills. 
• Strong analytical thinking and problem-solving abilities. 
• Ability to influence technical direction without direct authority. 

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Azure DevOps, Git-based workflows, and modern DevOps practices. 
• Experience leading mobile application engineering strategy, including architecture, deployment methodology, release governance, staged rollouts, production monitoring, and continuous improvement of mobile delivery practices.
• Experience designing event-driven or service-oriented architectures. 
• Familiarity with observability platforms such as Datadog, Azure Monitor, or similar tooling. 
• Postgres SQL
• Experience operating within regulated or compliance-driven environments. 
• Demonstrated ability to lead modernization initiatives and mentor engineering teams through change. 

WE ARE AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER