This is a fixed hybrid role on-site Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday at HQ in Maple Plain, MN
We are looking for a highly skilled Principal Software Engineer to join our Global Technology Services (GTS) team, where you will play a pivotal role in shaping the future of our finance and procurement platforms. This is an opportunity to make a meaningful impact at scale—designing and delivering modern, resilient applications that power critical business operations across the organization.
In this role, you will combine deep technical expertise with strong leadership, staying hands-on with development while guiding architecture, driving best practices, and influencing our long-term technology strategy. You’ll partner with cross-functional stakeholders to translate complex business needs into elegant, scalable solutions and help elevate the engineering team through mentorship and technical coaching.
This position is ideal for an experienced engineer who thrives at the intersection of innovation, leadership, and execution, and enjoys working in a fast-paced, collaborative environment where your ideas and contributions truly matter.
What You'll Do
- Design, develop, code, test, debug, implement, and document software applications
- Guide team development efforts towards successful project delivery through Agile methodologies.
- Provide technical leadership to teammates through coaching and mentoring.
- Influence work direction that aligns with both engineer and company goals.
- Maintain high standards of software quality within the team by establishing good practices and habits.
- Identify and encourage areas for growth and improvement within the team.
- Collaborate with other software engineers, technical product managers, and data architects to plan, design, develop, test, and maintain business applications.
- Appropriately applying engineering principles and concepts to area of specialization.
- Demonstrate creativity and ingenuity in applying engineering principles and practices
- Draw solutions from a wider range of experience
- Define technical approaches to project and act as lead on some projects and guide lower-level developers.
- Participate in peer-reviews of solution designs and related code.
- Analyze and resolve technical and application problems.
- Assess opportunities for application and process improvement and prepare documentation of rationale to share with team members and other affected parties.
- Adhere to high-quality development principles while delivering solutions on-time and in-budget.
- Interview and onboard new team members.
- Provide feedback on team members’ performance.
- Stay current on new technologies; research and evaluate a variety of software products.
- Perform additional tasks as assigned.
What It Takes
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field or comparable professional experience in these fields
- 10+ years of professional software development experience
- Experience mentoring engineers of varying experience levels from intern to senior
- Experience providing work direction to others by aligning tasks to skillsets and company objectives
- Experience working with engineers to estimate tasks, plan projects, and schedule releases
- Experience with software development focused on Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
- Experience with Microsoft AX and Dynamics 365 ERP ecosystems
- Knowledge of software design principles and patterns with experience coaching others in their use
- Internally motivated, able to work proficiently both independently and in a team environment
- Strong communication skills with both internal team members and external business stakeholders
- Strong initiative to find ways to improve solutions, systems, and processes
- Ability to be or become the technical expert for multiple projects
- Ability to successfully work under minimal supervision
What Makes You Standout
- Strong experience and understanding of Agile methodologies
- Experience with continuous integration and deployment strategies
- Experience with software best practices like code reviews, issue tracking systems, and version control systems with experience teaching developers to use them
- Expertise in automated testing, coupled with the ability to lead, coach, and influence teams to embed testing best practices into the development lifecycle
- Proven ability to keep up to date with advancements in your development domain
- History of expanding your skills in technical leadership
What's In It For You?
- We offer a competitive salary and annual bonus opportunity
- In addition, we offer amazing benefits including but not limited to:
- Health Insurance: Traditional OR High Deductible plan
- Flexible Spending Accounts
- Health Savings Account (including employer contributions)
- Dental and Vision
- Basic and Supplemental Life Insurance
- Short-Term and Long-Term Disability
- Paid caregiver leave
- You will receive PTO + Holiday Pay + Wellness Hours + Volunteer Hours
- 401k with company match and immediate vest
- Employee Stock Purchase Program at a 15% discounted rate
- Matching grants through Protolabs foundation
- And More!
Skills Required
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field or comparable professional experience
- 10+ years of professional software development experience
- Experience mentoring engineers of varying experience levels
- Experience providing work direction and aligning tasks to skillsets/company objectives
- Experience estimating tasks, planning projects, and scheduling releases
- Experience with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software development
- Experience with Microsoft AX and Dynamics 365 ERP ecosystems
- Knowledge of software design principles and patterns and experience coaching others
- Strong communication skills with internal teams and business stakeholders
- Ability to be or become the technical expert for multiple projects and work with minimal supervision
- Experience with Agile methodologies
- Experience with continuous integration and deployment strategies
- Experience with automated testing and embedding testing practices into development lifecycle
- Familiarity with code reviews, issue tracking systems, and version control workflows
Protolabs Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Protolabs and has not been reviewed or approved by Protolabs.
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Healthcare Strength — Medical, dental, and vision options are broadly available and described as good to excellent. Additional protections like short- and long-term disability and life insurance bolster the overall package.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — A starting PTO allotment plus paid holidays, along with added wellness and volunteer time, is emphasized, with some roles noting PTO growth over tenure. Paid caregiver leave appears in postings and supports flexibility for life events.
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Retirement Support — A 401(k) with company match and immediate vesting is offered, supporting long-term savings. This foundation is frequently cited alongside core financial benefits as a strong element of total rewards.
Protolabs Insights
What We Do
Protolabs is the world's fastest digital manufacturing source for rapid prototyping and on-demand production. The technology-enabled company produces custom parts and assemblies in as fast as 1 day with automated 3D printing, CNC machining, sheet metal fabrication, and injection molding processes. Our digital approach to manufacturing enables accelerated time to market, reduces development and production costs, and minimizes risk throughout the product life cycle. 3D Printing Our 3D printing service offers a wide selection of materials and technologies to create prototypes and end-use parts with complex geometries and detailed features. With tight process controls, careful design reviews, and extensive quality monitoring, we ensure precise and repeatable 3D-printed parts, every time. CNC Machining We use 3- and 5-axis milling along with turning to machine parts from commercial-grade plastics and metals. Our online quoting system and automated manufacturing process enable us to ship parts within 24 hours, helping customers accelerate development and reduce time to market. Sheet Metal Fabrication Protolabs is an industry leader in quick-turn sheet metal parts for both prototyping and low-volume production. Our digital approach to manufacturing enables us to fabricate sheet metal parts in as fast as 5 days. Additionally, we can support our customers’ development efforts with component assemblies, several finish options, and screen printing. Injection Molding Our injection molding service offers two options—prototyping and on-demand manufacturing—which provide customers a tooling solution that aligns with their project’s requirements. It’s used for quick-turn prototyping, bridge tooling, and low-volume production of up to 10,000+ parts in 15 days or less.
