Principal Software Engineer

At Selective, we don't just insure uniquely, we employ uniqueness.

Selective is a midsized U.S. domestic property and casualty insurance company with a history of strong, consistent financial performance for nearly 100 years. Selective's unique position as both a leading insurance group and an employer of choice is recognized in a wide variety of awards and honors, including listing in Forbes Best Midsize Employers in 2024 and certification as a Great Place to Work in 2024 for the fifth consecutive year.

Employees are empowered and encouraged to Be Uniquely You by being their true, unique selves and contributing their diverse talents, experiences, and perspectives to our shared success. Together, we are a high-performing team working to serve our customers responsibly by helping to mitigate loss, keep them safe, and restore their lives and businesses after an insured loss occurs.

Applicants must be authorized to work for any employer in the United States. Selective will not sponsor or assume the sponsorship of an employment visa at this time.

Note for NJ based candidates: This role will be located at our future headquarters in Short Hills, N.J. Until the new headquarters is operational, the successful candidate will be offered the ability to work in our Branchville, N.J. location during this interim period.

Selective Insurance's high-performing IT software engineering team has a fantastic opportunity for a highly-motivated, hands-on, and self-starting individual to join this accomplished team. The software engineering team executes critical business projects that support the company's growth, profitability, and customer experience goals. Candidates will be experts in software engineering, demonstrate leadership and creativity, think outside the box, and thrive in a fast-paced environment. The individual will act as a technical engineering leader, working across the release train with architects and product teams. The individual will develop and deliver complex systems as a thought leader and expert in full-stack development across the IT community.

• Designs, develops, implements, and troubleshoots complex, multi-tiered systems across multiple technical stacks in alignment with business and IT strategies and within committed schedules and funding.
• Acts as a technical leader, guiding and mentoring less experienced engineers.
• Demonstrates hands-on technical expertise in coding and debugging the technologies used to support business systems at all phases from design, development, testing, and deployment.
• Works to establish system non-functional requirements and drives work that meets needs, including performance, tuning, and quality enhancements.
• Debugs and troubleshoots complex system issues, performance issues, and infrastructure issues.
• Works in Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) as a servant leader, collaborates closely with solution and enterprise architects to contribute to the technical strategy, aligns the release train with the solution design, and defines necessary enablers on the architectural runway.
• Ensures software engineering best practices and standards are applied through frequent communications and code reviews, escalating deviations.
• Proactively identifies technical debt and works to modernize existing system technologies and processes.
• Continually looks for opportunities to advance DevOps and improve developer productivity and the overall change management process.
• Maintains alignment across teams and the ART through effective communications with architects, product management, quality assurance, and developers. Contributes to creation of estimates, implementation plans, research and design, and influences overall department goals.

Knowledge and Requirements

• Requires excellent communication skills, analytical thinking, strong judgment and the ability to work directly with various stakeholders across IT and product teams.
• Ability to adapt to rapidly changing technology, processes, business models and user behaviors.
• Experience acting as a technical leader and mentor to other software engineers or developers.
• Experience working on agile teams and release trains, and knowledge of SAFe, is preferred.
• Knowledge of asset, incident, change and problem management (ITIL) is preferred.
• Familiarity with Site Reliability Engineering concepts is preferred.
• Experience with P&C Insurance is preferred.

Education and Experience

• College degree in a related field or work equivalent.
• Mastery in software engineering and supporting enterprise web applications and full-stack development.
• Deep understanding of C#, client-side frameworks, .Net, REST APIs, package management, DevOps, service integration, UML modeling, SQL Server and modern development patterns.

Selective Insurance offers a total rewards package that includes a competitive base salary, incentive plan eligibility at all levels, and a wide array of benefits designed to help you and your family stay healthy, achieve your financial goals, and balance the demands of your work and personal life. These benefits include comprehensive health care plans, retirement savings plan with company match, discounted Employee Stock Purchase Program, tuition assistance and reimbursement programs, and paid time off plans. Additional details about our total rewards package will be provided during the recruiting process.

The actual base salary is based on geographic location, and the range is representative of salaries for this role throughout Selective's footprint. Additional considerations include relevant education, qualifications, experience, skills, performance, and business needs.

Selective is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. That means we respect and value every individual's unique opinions, beliefs, abilities, and perspectives. We are committed to promoting a welcoming culture that celebrates diverse talent, individual identity, different points of view and experiences - and empowers employees to contribute new ideas that support our continued and growing success. Building a highly engaged team is one of our core strategic imperatives, which we believe is enhanced by diversity, equity, and inclusion. We expect and encourage all employees and all of our business partners to embrace, practice, and monitor the attitudes, values, and goals of acceptance; address biases; and foster diversity of viewpoints and opinions.