Performance Test Engineer

QA Performance Engineer

Location: Vienna, VA, Winchester, VA, San Diego, CA and Pensacola, FL (Hybrid – 3 days/week onsite) Pay Rate: $50.00–$55.00/hour Openings: 2

Position Overview

Our Digital Delivery team is seeking a hands-on QA Performance Engineer to support the development and delivery of scalable, high-performing web and mobile applications across enterprise environments.

This is a dedicated Performance Engineering role—not an SDET or functional QA position. We are looking for candidates whose primary expertise and recent experience are centered on Performance Engineering, including designing, developing, executing, and analyzing enterprise performance tests to ensure application scalability, stability, and production readiness.

Candidates with predominantly SDET or functional automation testing backgrounds will not be considered unless they have significant recent experience serving in a dedicated Performance Engineer role.

You will work closely with QA leadership, developers, DevOps engineers, architects, and infrastructure teams to identify performance risks early, optimize system performance, and establish repeatable performance testing practices throughout the SDLC.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and execute automated performance test scripts using NeoLoad or equivalent enterprise performance testing tools.
• Perform load, stress, endurance, scalability, volume, and capacity testing for enterprise web, mobile, and API applications.
• Develop realistic workload models and performance scenarios that accurately simulate production traffic.
• Define performance baselines, SLAs, and KPIs using production and production-like environments.
• Analyze test results to identify performance bottlenecks across application, database, infrastructure, and network layers.
• Perform root cause analysis and provide actionable recommendations to improve system performance, scalability, and reliability.
• Utilize monitoring and observability tools such as Azure Application Insights, Splunk, Dynatrace, or AppDynamics to analyze application health and performance.
• Build and maintain scalable, reusable, and automated performance testing frameworks and scripts using JavaScript.
• Integrate performance testing into Agile development and CI/CD pipelines to support early performance validation (Shift-Left Testing).
• Identify system dependencies and implement service virtualization and mocking strategies using WireMock or similar tools.
• Support performance testing environments to ensure consistent, stable, and repeatable testing.
• Collaborate with developers, architects, DevOps, and infrastructure teams to resolve complex performance issues.
• Document performance findings, defects, risks, and optimization recommendations for technical and business stakeholders.
• Mentor junior engineers and contribute to continuous improvement of performance testing processes and standards.

Required Qualifications

• 4+ years of recent, hands-on experience in a dedicated Performance Engineering or Performance Testing role.
• Strong expertise in: Performance Engineering, Performance Test Planning, Performance Analysis, Load Testing, Stress Testing, Endurance Testing, Scalability Testing, Capacity Planning, Workload Modeling.
• Hands-on experience with NeoLoad (preferred) or comparable enterprise performance testing tools such as LoadRunner, JMeter, Gatling, or k6.
• Experience developing and maintaining automated performance test scripts using JavaScript.
• Strong ability to analyze performance metrics, identify bottlenecks, conduct root cause analysis, and recommend performance improvements.
• Experience with monitoring and observability platforms such as Azure Application Insights, Splunk, Dynatrace, or AppDynamics.
• Experience using Postman for API testing and validation.
• Experience with Azure DevOps or similar test management and CI/CD platforms.
• Solid understanding of SDLC, STLC, Agile/Scrum, DevOps, CI/CD, Shift-Left Testing.
• Excellent analytical, troubleshooting, communication, and stakeholder management skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with WireMock or other service virtualization tools.
• Experience testing microservices, distributed systems, and cloud-native applications.
• Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, or containerized environments.
• Financial services or banking industry experience.
• Exposure to functional automation testing or SDET practices is a plus, but should be secondary to Performance Engineering expertise.

Must-Have Skills

• Dedicated Performance Engineering experience
• Performance Testing
• Load Testing
• Stress Testing
• Endurance Testing
• Scalability Testing
• Performance Analysis
• Performance Metrics
• Workload Modeling
• Root Cause Analysis
• NeoLoad (preferred), LoadRunner, or JMeter
• JavaScript Performance Scripting
• Azure DevOps
• Postman
• Splunk or Azure Application Insights
• Agile
• SDLC/STLC
• CI/CD

Nice-to-Have Skills

• WireMock
• Service Virtualization
• Dynatrace
• AppDynamics
• Docker
• Kubernetes
• Cloud-native application testing
• Banking or Financial Services experience
• Functional testing/SDET experience (secondary skill only)

Important Hiring Manager Note

This is a dedicated Performance Engineering opportunity.

The ideal candidate will have a proven track record as a Performance Engineer, with the majority of their recent experience focused on performance testing, performance analysis, scalability validation, and production performance optimization.

Candidates whose backgrounds are primarily in SDET, QA Automation, or functional testing without significant dedicated Performance Engineering experience will not be considered. Functional testing experience is considered a nice-to-have, but it should be a secondary skill rather than the candidate's primary area of expertise.

About Seneca Resources: Seneca Resources is client driven provider of strategic Information Technology consulting services and Workforce Solutions to government and industry. Seneca Resources is a leading IT services provider with offices in Reston, Virginia, Alabama and Columbia, Maryland that service clients throughout the United States. The key to our success lies within our strong corporate culture which drives our business. We challenge our staff through engaging work, and we reward our staff through competitive compensation, extensive professional training, and excellent opportunities for career advancement. In turn, we look for only the best and brightest to join our team. We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and value the benefits of diversity in our workplace.