Typical comp shape
Solutions engineers usually earn rsu + espp. Common employers include Snowflake, Databricks, MongoDB.
What Montana changes
In Montana, every RSU vest, NSO exercise, and ESPP purchase carries 5.9% state tax on top of federal. For a senior solutions engineer with $300k+ of equity income, the state layer routinely adds $25-45k to the annual bill.
Planning cadence
For a solutions engineer in Montana, the three planning windows are: after each RSU vest (withholding check and sell-vs-hold), before any ISO exercise (AMT model at federal only), and in Q4 (estimated tax top-up to clear the safe harbor).