Performance Test Engineer

The Performance Test Engineer is a technical leader in the Advanced Services organization and a strategic participant in customer engagements. The Performance Test Engineer helps set the direction for performance testing with customers, helps create performance testing standards and procedures within iLAB, and provides leadership on performance test strategy and test environment design. The role owns the full performance testing lifecycle on assigned engagements, from planning through scripting, execution, analysis, and reporting, and is responsible for the design, enhancement, and future growth of iLAB's performance testing architecture and framework.

Customer and Engagement Leadership

• Manage multiple projects, serving as the primary point of contact for non-functional testing initiatives with customer project managers, business analysts, and application teams.
• Help define scope and estimate effort for new customer engagements and contribute to statements of work, proposals, and RFP/RFQ responses.
• Lead discussions with customers to understand end-to-end business processes across the applications and platforms under test and their connected (edge) system interfaces.
• Effectively communicate risks and findings, employ appropriate risk mitigation strategies and tactics, and engage with stakeholders at all levels in plain language.
• Advise and assist customers in the design and construction of performant, scalable software solutions.

Planning and Strategy

• Identify non-functional requirements and define performance testing objectives, scope, and success criteria for each engagement.
• Design the performance test plan, test strategy, and workload model, including concurrent user models, pacing, think time, transaction rates, and SLA traceability.
• Gather information and obtain a thorough understanding of application-to-application interface transactions, identify potential areas of performance risk between systems and platforms, and propose non-functional testing strategies to test and mitigate those risks.
• Recommend the tool(s) to be used for performance testing and monitoring, and recommend and participate in tool evaluation, integration, and adoption.

Scripting, Environment, and Test Data

• Develop performance test scripts and scenarios in LoadRunner and NeoLoad, including correlation, parameterization, verification of key server responses, and handling of complex authentication and session flows.
• Configure and manage the performance test environment, load generators, and monitoring, and identify the testing parameters for each run.
• Prepare and load test data to support the virtual user populations required by the workload model.
• Review and update performance testing artifacts (scripts, plans, data, and results) for accuracy and completeness and maintain them to iLAB coding and documentation standards.

Execution and Analysis

• Execute and report on performance tests (Baseline, Load, Peak, Stress, and Soak where required) and confirm results are repeatable before they are reported.
• Confirm system stability and test repeatability, according to agreed variances.
• Apply consistent monitoring metrics across runs (response times, throughput, hits per second, error rates, CPU, memory, garbage collection) so results can be compared build to build.
• Analyze performance test results and perform cloud, front-end, and backend analysis and troubleshooting to locate performance obstructions and identify the root cause of performance-related issues.
• Generate and present performance test results, findings, and key recommendations to customer leadership and application teams.
• Translate performance test findings into targeted improvements that strengthen system availability, reliability, and consistent software performance.
• Provide technical leadership in the development and implementation of performance engineering processes, maintain performance industry standards and cloud best practices across the organization.
• Maintain transition-ready engagement documentation so that any engagement can be picked up by another iLAB engineer.

Qualifications

Required Experience

• 8+ years of strong proven experience in performance test planning and hands-on execution across multiple projects.
• Advanced knowledge of performance testing using LoadRunner (VuGen, Controller or LoadRunner Enterprise, Analysis) and NeoLoad; experience with Apache JMeter or similar tools is a plus.
• Proficient in designing scripts and executing tests, including correlation, parameterization, and test data management for large virtual user populations.
• Experience in performance load modeling: building workload models from business requirements and usage data.
• Proficient and experienced in performance testing cloud-based applications and identifying performance bottlenecks.
• Experience working with Application Performance Management (APM) tools such as Datadog, AppDynamics, Splunk, or Dynatrace to capture performance metrics such as response times, throughput, hits per second, CPU, garbage collection, memory utilization, and memory leaks of the applications under test.
• Proficient technical understanding of application ecosystems, including integrations, data flow, and access control.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with good debugging and troubleshooting skills.
• Experience working in an agile engineering environment and with Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD).
• Proficiency in program, quality, and issue management.
• Strong written and verbal communication; able to produce customer-ready test plans, findings reports, and executive summaries.

Preferred

• ISTQB certification (Foundation Level, Performance Testing specialist, or equivalent).
• Experience with state or federal government customers and the documentation and approval processes that accompany them.
• Experience testing applications hosted in Microsoft Azure or similar cloud platforms, including autoscaling behavior.
• Experience training or mentoring performance testers.