Performance Engineer

Aquent has partnered with a leading financial services firm dedicated to empowering millions of users through innovative, high-performing digital solutions. In this dynamic role, you will have a direct, transformative impact on the speed, scalability, and reliability of cutting-edge digital platforms, ensuring seamless and lightning-fast interactions for our users. By driving performance directly into delivery workflows-from initial development to continuous production monitoring-you will collaborate with cross-functional teams to shape the future of a robust digital ecosystem.

The Opportunity

As a key driver of digital optimization, you will identify and resolve complex performance bottlenecks across applications and infrastructure. You will design comprehensive workload models, evaluate critical user journeys, and establish performance budgets that elevate engineering standards. This role offers an exceptional platform to innovate, mentor fellow engineers, and collaborate with developers, UX/UI designers, and DevOps teams to deliver top-tier user experiences.

Key Responsibilities

• Plan and execute performance testing for web applications, APIs, and critical user journeys using industry-leading tools such as JMeter and LoadRunner.
• Design comprehensive workload models and test scenarios for baseline, load, stress, endurance, and capacity testing.
• Analyze intricate results, traces, logs, and network waterfalls to pinpoint frontend, backend, infrastructure, and dependency bottlenecks.
• Conduct thorough frontend performance audits utilizing tools like Lighthouse, WebPageTest, Chrome DevTools, and real-user monitoring platforms.
• Evaluate Core Web Vitals and related metrics, including LCP, INP, CLS, FCP, and TTFB, and translate findings into actionable improvement recommendations.
• Build and maintain robust performance dashboards, service-level indicators, and actionable alerts using advanced observability platforms.
• Configure and continuously improve synthetic monitoring and real-user monitoring for key pages and user journeys.
• Assess CDN and edge performance, including configuration, caching policies, cache headers, compression, and content delivery behavior.
• Validate cache behavior across public and authenticated experiences, covering HIT, MISS, STALE, and bypass scenarios.
• Develop scripts, utilities, and automation for repeatable performance tests, audits, reporting, and regression detection.
• Integrate critical performance checks into CI/CD pipelines and help establish performance budgets and release criteria.
• Work hands-on with application teams to implement and verify performance improvements, contributing to frontend and API changes where appropriate.
• Review architecture and design proposals, providing expert insights on scalability, resilience, caching, and potential performance risks.
• Collaborate extensively with developers, UX/UI designers, API teams, and platform/DevOps teams to resolve complex issues and elevate delivery practices.
• Conduct code and test reviews, document findings meticulously, and mentor fellow engineers on best practices in performance engineering.
• Contribute actively to Agile planning, estimation, and the continuous improvement of performance tooling and processes.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• 5+ years of experience in performance engineering, performance testing, or software engineering.
• Strong experience designing, running, and analyzing load and performance tests with JMeter, LoadRunner, or comparable tools.
• Experience with frontend performance testing and browser diagnostics, including Chrome DevTools and network analysis.
• Hands-on experience building performance dashboards, monitoring systems, and alerting.
• Working knowledge of web application architecture, HTTP, APIs, browsers, and distributed systems.
• Experience with CDN and caching concepts, including cache-control headers, cache keys, invalidation, and edge delivery.
• Experience automating tests and analysis using scripting or programming languages such as JavaScript/TypeScript, Java, or Python.
• Understanding of Core Web Vitals and performance optimization techniques for modern web applications.
• Experience investigating performance issues across application, API, database, network, and infrastructure layers.
• Strong analytical, debugging, and problem-solving skills, with cross-browser and device testing experience.
• Clear communication skills and the ability to translate technical findings into prioritized recommendations.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Akamai configuration, CDN analytics, caching rules, or edge delivery.
• Familiarity with observability platforms such as Splunk, Dynatrace, Datadog, New Relic, or Grafana.
• Experience with Lighthouse CI, WebPageTest, SpeedCurve, mPulse, or similar frontend performance tools.
• Experience with synthetic monitoring and real-user monitoring (RUM).
• Familiarity with React, Next.js, server-side rendering, and edge-rendering strategies.
• Experience with cloud platforms, containers, and Docker.
• Experience integrating performance tests into CI/CD pipelines.
• Familiarity with A/B testing and measuring performance impact.
• Knowledge of accessibility standards, including WCAG 2.2 AA.
• Experience with REST or GraphQL APIs and headless CMS-driven applications.