Senior Performance Engineer

Senior Performance Engineer - Java Trading Platform
Location: Southlake, TX (4 days onsite, 1 day remote)
Contract to Hire | 6+ Months | Conversion based on performance


About the Role
Join a high-impact Performance Engineering team focused on optimizing a Java-based trading platform at scale. As a Senior Performance Engineer, you will independently drive performance, scalability, and resiliency initiatives for mission-critical financial systems. You'll dive deep into code, analyze complex systems, and collaborate with cross-functional teams to push the limits of latency and reliability. This is an ideal opportunity for engineers passionate about solving tough performance challenges and making a measurable impact in the fintech domain.

Responsibilities


- Plan, execute, and deliver performance, scalability, and resiliency validations for Java trading systems
- Investigate architecture, business flows, dependencies, and production behaviors to inform performance initiatives
- Define requirements, workloads, and acceptance criteria in partnership with development and QA teams
- Build and maintain performance test scripts, workload generators, automation frameworks, and mock services
- Perform rigorous load, stress, endurance, failover, recovery, degradation, and resiliency testing
- Deeply analyze Java source code, JVM internals, system resources, databases, and network metrics to identify bottlenecks
- Recommend and validate technical improvements for code, configuration, infrastructure, design, and capacity
- Maintain dashboards, diagnostic tools, runbooks, and workload libraries to support ongoing performance monitoring
- Leverage automation and AI tools to enhance scripting, diagnostics, and documentation
- Clearly communicate findings, risks, and recommendations to stakeholders

Required Skills and Experience


- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or Engineering
- 5+ years in performance engineering, scalability, or production performance analysis
- 2+ years hands-on Java development with deep understanding of JVM internals, concurrency, multithreading, memory, and garbage collection
- Expertise in troubleshooting, profiling, and diagnosing Java and system-level issues (using logs, dumps, profilers, observability tools)
- Proficient in workload automation using Java, Scala, Python, shell scripting, JMeter, or Gatling
- Strong knowledge of Linux, databases, application servers, caching, connection pools, distributed systems, and networks
- Experience with Splunk, Grafana, and JVM troubleshooting

Preferred Skills


- Real-time financial or trading system experience
- Familiarity with Google Cloud, Kubernetes, or Docker
- Experience with AI-assisted analysis, LLM tools, or intelligent automation
- Exposure to AI tools within Visual Studio or IntelliJ IDEA

Benefits


- Career growth through hands-on performance engineering in a high-demand fintech environment
- Opportunity to convert to full-time based on performance
- Hybrid work model: Enjoy a collaborative onsite environment with flexibility for remote work
- Be at the forefront of leveraging AI and automation in performance engineering

How to Apply
Interested candidates authorized to work in the US without sponsorship are encouraged to submit their resume. Face-to-face interviews are not required. Join us to shape the future of high-performance trading technology.