Senior Performance Engineer – Loadrunner, Dynatrace, JMeter

M&T Bank•Buffalo, NY

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Senior Performance Engineer is a senior technical contributor and domain specialist who defines, engineers, and leads enterprise performance testing solutions. The role validates the scalability, reliability, resiliency, and production readiness of complex applications, services, and platforms. It provides technical leadership across initiatives, identifies systemic performance risks, establishes reusable standards and frameworks, and delivers data-driven recommendations that inform architecture, capacity, and release decisions. The role partners with application teams, architects, infrastructure, database, middleware, cloud, cybersecurity, vendors, and business stakeholders. It also mentors engineers and advances shift-left performance engineering practices. The position is based in Buffalo, New York, and follows a four-days-in-office, one-day-work-from-home model. The bank sponsors TN and H-1B transfers on a case-by-case basis. The position is not open to individuals on an F-1 student visa, including those eligible for CPT, OPT, or the STEM OPT extension.

Requirements

Combined minimum of 8 years of higher education and/or work experience in systems design, management, and/or architecture.
At least 8 years of professional experience in software testing, performance engineering, software engineering, or a related technical engineering discipline.
At least 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 skill with 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, and distributed-system performance testing; performance analysis; bottleneck identification; root-cause support; scalability, capacity, resiliency, endurance, and failover testing; and SDLC, Agile, DevOps, CI/CD, and shift-left performance engineering.
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; ability to translate technical findings into business risk, 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 APM 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 cloud performance engineering in Azure or AWS.
Experience with test data strategy and service virtualization.
Scripting or automation experience 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 and implement 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 application architectures, technical designs, infrastructure changes, migration plans, release scope, and nonfunctional requirements to identify performance risk and recommend mitigation.
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 risk, remediation options, and release decisions.
Create and maintain reusable performance engineering standards, scripting practices, test-plan expectations, analysis methods, reporting templates, readiness criteria, and governance controls.
Advance shift-left performance testing by mentoring Software Engineers and Performance Engineers in JMeter, LoadRunner, test design, scripting, analysis, troubleshooting, and CI/CD integration.
Coordinate technical activities with vendors and platform teams, including OpenText, BlazeMeter, Dynatrace, and application vendors, to resolve tooling, testing, and product-performance issues.
Lead troubleshooting of complex 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.
Identify opportunities to 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 for technical and non-technical audiences.
Understand and adhere to company risk, security, compliance, audit, and regulatory requirements.