Performance Test Engineer / Performance Engineering Lead

Performance Test Engineer / Performance Engineering Lead

We are partnering with a leading technology-driven telecommunications organisation that is rapidly scaling its digital initiatives and platforms. We are looking for an experienced Performance Test Engineer / Performance Engineering Lead to take ownership of performance testing and drive application and service performance improvements across large-scale systems.

This is an excellent opportunity to work with modern technologies, large-scale platforms and cross-functional engineering teams while making a direct impact on application performance, reliability and user experience.

Key Responsibilities

• Take ownership of existing performance test scripts and frameworks currently managed by vendors.
• Design, schedule and drive end-to-end performance testing activities.
• Define performance testing strategies, scenarios, workload models, test environments, expected results and success criteria.
• Design and implement processes to improve the efficiency, reliability and execution time of performance tests.
• Establish and track application and service performance metrics, NFRs and SLOs.
• Build capacity and load models in collaboration with Architecture and Engineering teams.
• Analyse performance test results, identify bottlenecks and work with engineering teams to drive performance improvements.
• Collaborate closely with Engineering, QA, Architecture and Product stakeholders to align performance objectives.
• Establish effective ways to track, measure and report the results and effectiveness of performance test runs.
• Provide performance insights and recommendations to improve application scalability, stability and user experience.
• Support performance triage, release governance, performance sign-off and release-blocking decisions where required.
• Communicate performance test outcomes and recommendations to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Drive continuous improvement of performance engineering standards, practices and processes.

Must-Have Skills & Experience:

Load Modelling & Performance Engineering

• Strong experience defining Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs) and Service Level Objectives (SLOs) with Architecture and Engineering teams.
• Experience building capacity and workload models based on business and technical requirements.
• Strong understanding of open vs. closed workload models and their application in performance testing.

Performance Testing Tools

• Strong hands-on experience with one or more of k6, JMeter, Gatling or LoadRunner.
• Proven experience executing performance tests at real production-like scale, including distributed load generation.
• Strong experience in correlation, parameterisation and complex performance test scripting.

Observability & APM

• Hands-on experience with one or more observability/APM platforms such as:
• Dynatrace, AppDynamics, New Relic, Grafana, Prometheus, Splunk, ELK or OpenTelemetry.
• Ability to use application and infrastructure telemetry to identify, isolate and troubleshoot performance bottlenecks.

Cloud & Platform

• Strong understanding of cloud-native and distributed application environments.
• Experience with Docker/containers and Kubernetes.
• Good understanding of load balancers, queues and distributed systems.
• Experience with protocols and technologies beyond REST, such as gRPC, WebSockets and messaging/queue-based systems.

Technical Leadership

• Experience establishing or significantly improving a performance testing/performance engineering practice.
• Ability to define engineering standards, testing methodologies and best practices.
• Experience mentoring engineers and building high-performing technical teams.
• Strong ability to drive continuous improvement in performance testing efficiency, reliability and execution time.

Stakeholder Management & Release Governance

• Strong experience working with Engineering, QA, Architecture, Product and other stakeholders.
• Ability to communicate performance results and recommendations effectively to non-technical audiences.
• Experience managing performance triage, release sign-off and performance-related release blocking decisions.
• Strong ability to establish KPIs and report on performance trends and improvement.