Sr. Quality/Performance Engineer

Senior Performance Engineer Role Summary We are seeking a Senior Performance Engineer to serve as a technical leader responsible for ensuring large-scale, mission?critical enterprise applications meet strict performance, scalability, resiliency, and efficiency standards. This role focuses on cloud?native, distributed systems and requires deep expertise in performance engineering, observability, automation, and advanced analytics. You will lead performance strategy end to end—shaping non?functional requirements, designing realistic performance tests, diagnosing complex system behavior, and influencing architectural decisions to deliver highly performant systems across hybrid and cloud environments. This is a senior individual contributor role with strong cross?functional influence and technical leadership responsibilities. Key Responsibilities Performance Engineering Leadership Own end?to?end performance engineering activities from workload modeling through analysis and optimization. Define and validate performance KPIs, SLAs, SLOs, and non?functional requirements. Act as a performance SME, mentoring engineers and promoting best practices across teams. Cloud?Native & Distributed Systems Performance Design and execute performance tests for microservices?based, containerized, and cloud?hosted systems (AWS, Azure, GCP). Analyze and optimize autoscaling behavior, load balancing, APIs, and distributed workloads. Evaluate cost?performance tradeoffs across compute, storage, and networking resources. Leverage native cloud monitoring and telemetry platforms to assess system behavior. Performance Testing & Automation Build and maintain performance test scripts using tools such as LoadRunner, JMeter, Gatling, Locust, or K6. Integrate performance testing into CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins, GitHub Actions, or Azure DevOps. Create reusable, modular workloads that reflect real?world traffic and usage patterns. Monitoring, Observability & Optimization Use APM and observability tools (e.g., Dynatrace, Datadog, AppDynamics, New Relic, Grafana) for real?time monitoring. Define observability standards including metrics, structured logging, and distributed tracing. Perform deep performance diagnostics across application, database, messaging, caching, and integration layers. Recommend tuning and optimization strategies for APIs, microservices, databases (SQL/NoSQL), JVM/.NET, and cloud infrastructure. Evaluate resilience and scalability via failover, chaos testing, and peak readiness assessments. Advanced Analytics & AI?Driven Optimization Apply AI/ML?based techniques to detect anomalies, identify bottlenecks, and predict performance issues. Use intelligent analytics to accelerate root?cause analysis and capacity planning. Incorporate insights into dashboards and performance reporting. Collaboration & SDLC Integration Partner closely with Engineering, Architecture, DevOps, SRE, QA, and Product teams. Ensure performance considerations are embedded early in the SDLC through design and architecture reviews. Produce clear performance documentation including baselines, reports, RCA summaries, and capacity models. Qualifications Expert knowledge of performance engineering, distributed systems, concurrency, and cloud?native architectures. Proven ability to analyze complex performance data and influence technical and architectural decisions. Strong hands?on experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP). Experience with performance testing frameworks and observability/APM tools. Familiarity with CI/CD integration for performance testing. Experience with AI/ML?driven observability or predictive analytics is a strong plus. Domain experience in highly regulated or transaction?heavy environments is advantageous. Vaco by Highspring values a diverse workplace and strongly encourages women, people of color, LGBTQ individuals, people with disabilities, members of ethnic minorities, foreign-born residents, and veterans to apply. EEO Notice Vaco by Highspring is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race (including but not limited to traits historically associated with race such as hair texture and hair style), color, sex (includes pregnancy or related conditions), religion or creed, national origin, citizenship, age, disability, status as a veteran, union membership, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, political affiliation, or any other protected characteristics as required by federal, state or local law. Vaco by Highspring and its parents, affiliates, and subsidiaries are committed to the full inclusion of all qualified individuals. As part of this commitment, Vaco by Highspring and its parents, affiliates, and subsidiaries will ensure that persons with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodations. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or to receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please contact View email address on click.appcast.io . Vaco by Highspring also wants all applicants to know their rights that workplace discrimination is illegal. By submitting to this position, you agree that you will be giving Vaco by Highspring the exclusive right to present your as a candidate for the foregoing employment opportunity. You further agree that you have represented information about yourself accurately and have not affirmatively misrepresented your qualifications. You also agree to maintain as confidential, to the fullest extent permitted by law, any information you learn from Vaco by Highspring about the position and you will limit disclosure of information about the position only to the extent necessary to perform any obligations in furtherance of your application. In exchange, Vaco by Highspring agrees to exercise reasonable efforts to represent you through all solicitation, job screening and resume dispersal. Privacy Notice Vaco by Highspring and its parents, affiliates, and subsidiaries (“we,” “our,” or “Vaco by Highspring”) respects your privacy and are committed to providing transparent notice of our policies. California residents may access Vaco by Highspring HR Notice at Collection for California Applicants and Employees here. Virginia residents may access our state specific policies here. Residents of all other states may access our policies here. Canadian residents may access our policies in English here and in French here. Residents of countries governed by GDPR may access our policies here. Pay Transparency Notice Determining compensation for this role (and others) at Vaco by Highspring depends upon a wide array of factors including but not limited to: the individual’s skill sets, experience and training; licensure and certification requirements; office location and other geographic considerations; other business and organizational needs. With that said, as required by local law, Vaco by Highspring believes that the following salary range referenced above reasonably estimates the base compensation for an individual hired into this position in geographies that require salary range disclosure. The individual may also be eligible for discretionary bonuses.aa415a4b-8b21-40fc-a65c-70d2b25ca29a