Senior Performance Engineer – Loadrunner, Dynatrace, JMeter
About The Position
The Senior Performance Engineer is a senior technical contributor and domain specialist who defines, engineers, and leads enterprise performance testing solutions to validate the scalability, reliability, resiliency, and production readiness of complex applications, services, and platforms. The role provides technical leadership across multiple initiatives, identifies systemic performance risks, establishes reusable standards and frameworks, and delivers data-driven recommendations that inform architecture, capacity, and release decisions. It partners with application teams, architects, infrastructure, database, middleware, cloud, cybersecurity, vendors, and business stakeholders, while mentoring engineers and advancing shift-left performance engineering practices. The position leads performance engineering strategy, planning, execution, analysis, and reporting for complex initiatives throughout the software development lifecycle. It designs workload models, test frameworks, and validation approaches for web, API, mobile, cloud, containerized, and distributed applications; builds and maintains performance test assets and automation; and leads load, stress, endurance, volume, scalability, resiliency, failover, and capacity testing. Using Dynatrace and other observability tools, the engineer correlates application and infrastructure telemetry, identifies bottlenecks, and supports root-cause analysis. The engineer reviews architecture, technical designs, infrastructure changes, migration plans, release scope, and nonfunctional requirements to identify risk and recommend mitigation. The role defines testing objectives and readiness criteria, advises teams on remediation and release decisions, maintains reusable standards and governance, mentors engineers, coordinates with vendors and platform teams, troubleshoots complex performance issues, supports capacity planning, and communicates findings to technical and non-technical audiences. The position also requires adherence to company risk, security, compliance, audit, and regulatory requirements. The position is based in Buffalo, New York, and follows a four-days-in-office, one-day-work-from-home model. The bank considers TN and H-1B transfers case by case. Applicants on F-1 student visas, including those eligible for CPT, OPT, or STEM OPT, are not eligible for this position.
Requirements
- Combined minimum of 8 years of higher education and/or work experience in systems design, management, and/or architecture.
- Minimum of 8 years of professional experience in software testing, performance engineering, software engineering, or a related technical engineering discipline.
- Minimum of 5 years of hands-on experience developing and executing enterprise performance tests with OpenText Core Performance Engineering (LoadRunner Cloud), LoadRunner Enterprise, or LoadRunner Professional/VuGen.
- Strong understanding of the system development and infrastructure lifecycle and architecture, vendor best practices, IT Service Management, and systems design.
- Advanced experience designing performance test strategies, workload models, success criteria, and test scenarios for complex or distributed systems.
- Advanced experience developing and maintaining performance test scripts, including C-based VuGen scripting and JMeter.
- Demonstrated experience analyzing application performance and leading investigations of complex bottlenecks using APM and observability data.
- Experience providing technical leadership across multiple teams or initiatives and mentoring less-experienced engineers.
- Experience working within Agile, DevOps, CI/CD, risk-management, and production-readiness processes.
- Advanced skills in OpenText Core Performance Engineering (LoadRunner Cloud), LoadRunner Professional/VuGen, JMeter, and C programming for performance test automation.
- Knowledge of performance test strategy, design, workload modeling, API/web/mobile/cloud/distributed-system testing, bottleneck identification, root-cause support, scalability, capacity, resiliency, endurance, failover testing, SDLC, Agile, DevOps, CI/CD, shift-left performance engineering, AI in QA/testing, technical risk assessment, production readiness, and executive reporting.
- Expert analytical and problem-solving ability, with sound technical judgment in ambiguous, high-risk situations.
- Ability to lead through influence, establish technical direction, and align multiple teams without direct authority.
- Excellent written, oral, interpersonal, and presentation skills for technical teams, project stakeholders, and senior leaders.
- Ability to translate complex technical findings into clear business risks, options, and actionable recommendations.
- Strong planning, prioritization, and organizational skills across multiple concurrent initiatives.
- Ability to mentor engineers, review technical work, and improve team capability through practical guidance and standards.
- Continuous learning mindset focused on engineering quality, operational stability, automation, and measurable improvement.
Nice To Haves
- Experience with BlazeMeter, Azure Load Testing, or other cloud-based performance testing platforms.
- Experience with Dynatrace, AppDynamics, New Relic, or comparable application performance monitoring and observability platforms.
- Experience testing enterprise-scale digital, mobile, API, event-driven, cloud, containerized, and distributed systems.
- Experience with Kubernetes, OpenShift, Azure, AWS, databases, middleware, messaging, and network-related performance analysis.
- Financial services or other highly regulated industry experience.
- Experience developing performance engineering standards, governance, reusable frameworks, or enterprise testing practices.
- Performance testing, cloud, DevOps, software engineering, or industry-recognized technical certifications.
- Experience with GitLab or comparable CI/CD pipeline integration.
- Experience with test data strategy and service virtualization.
- Scripting or automation using Java, JavaScript, Python, Groovy, or comparable languages.
- Keeps current with emerging performance engineering trends, technologies, tools, and frameworks; evaluates their applicability and shares knowledge, best practices, and recommendations with the team.
Responsibilities
- Lead performance engineering strategy, planning, execution, analysis, and reporting for complex, high-risk, or enterprise-scale initiatives across the SDLC.
- Design performance test strategies, workload models, test frameworks, and validation approaches for web, API, mobile, cloud, containerized, and distributed applications.
- Engineer and maintain performance test assets using OpenText Core Performance Engineering (LoadRunner Cloud), LoadRunner Professional/VuGen, JMeter, BlazeMeter, and related tools.
- Develop automated performance test scripts in C and other applicable languages, including correlation, parameterization, reusable functions, error handling, data management, and validation logic.
- Lead load, stress, endurance, volume, scalability, resiliency, failover, and capacity testing under realistic and peak business demand.
- Use Dynatrace and other observability tools to correlate application, infrastructure, database, network, and user-experience metrics, identify bottlenecks, and guide root-cause analysis.
- Review architectures, technical designs, infrastructure changes, migration plans, release scope, and nonfunctional requirements to identify and mitigate performance risk.
- Define test objectives, workload assumptions, success criteria, entry and exit criteria, dependencies, constraints, and production-readiness recommendations.
- Provide technical guidance to application teams, architects, infrastructure partners, project leaders, and vendors on performance risks, remediation options, and release decisions.
- Create and maintain performance engineering standards, scripting practices, test-plan expectations, analysis methods, reporting templates, readiness criteria, and governance controls.
- Mentor Software Engineers and Performance Engineers in JMeter, LoadRunner, test design, scripting, analysis, troubleshooting, and CI/CD integration.
- Coordinate technical activities with OpenText, BlazeMeter, Dynatrace, platform teams, and application vendors to resolve tooling, testing, and product-performance issues.
- Lead troubleshooting of production and pre-production performance issues by reproducing workload conditions, analyzing telemetry, and validating corrective actions.
- Support enterprise capacity planning by translating business volumes and growth assumptions into workload models, scalability findings, resource considerations, and risk-based recommendations.
- Improve performance engineering efficiency through automation, reusable assets, modern tooling, cloud capabilities, and continuous testing practices.
- Communicate findings through technical reports, executive summaries, risk statements, and presentations tailored to technical and non-technical audiences.
- Understand and adhere to company risk, security, compliance, audit, and regulatory requirements.
Benefits
- Competitive compensation.
- Health, welfare, and retirement benefits.
- 401(k) match at 5%.
- Work-life balance and flexible work arrangements.
- Banking Officers start with 25 days of PTO plus 12 paid holidays.
- 40 hours of paid volunteer time per year.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
No Education Listed
