Senior Performance Engineer

Boston College

Chestnut Hill, MA

JOB DETAILS
SALARY
$110,150–$137,700 Per Year
SKILLS
Analysis Skills, Architectural Services, Benchmarking, Best Practices, Budgeting, Capacity Management, Code Reviews, Concurrency, Continuous Deployment/Delivery, Continuous Integration, Data Collection, Database Technology, Instrumentation, Memory Leaks, Mentoring, Oracle, Performance Engineering, Performance Testing, Quality Management, Risk Analysis, Root Cause Analysis, Scripting (Scripting Languages), Simulation, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), System Integration (SI), Systems Maintenance, Systems Reliability, Telemetry, Test Plan/Schedule, Test Suite, User Interface/Experience (UI/UX)
LOCATION
Chestnut Hill, MA
POSTED
30+ days ago

The Senior Performance Engineer spearheads the strategy for application scalability capacity planning and resilience. They will lead end-to-end performance initiatives working across functional boundaries to ensure our systems are robust, responsive, and reliable. From developing sophisticated simulation scripts to performing deep-dive root cause analysis on production-level bottlenecks, they will be the primary advocate for a seamless user experience.

Primary Responsibilities: • Lead the authoring and iteration of automated performance scripts and CICD integrations. • Own the instrumentation and telemetry strategy to ensure high-fidelity data capture.

Shift-Left Engineering: Partner with developers and analysts from day one of the SDLC. Ensure performance requirements arent an afterthought but are documented and baked into the initial architecture.

Proactive Monitoring & SRE Alignment: Anticipate and mitigate issues before they impact the user. Will leverage APM tools and profilers to maintain a pulse on system health and drive the resolution of complex concurrency and scalability bottlenecks.

Key Activities: • SRE Collaboration: Partner with Technical Services to establish SLOs and Error Budgets balancing the need for rapid feature velocity with rock-solid system reliability. • Self-Service Enablement: Design and build continuous performance testing capabilities that allow developers to execute tests in a self-service capacity within their own pipelines. • Workload Modeling: Construct sophisticated workload models and simulations that accurately mimic real-world traffic to establish scalability benchmarks. • Architectural Scrutiny: Participate in design reviews to identify performance risks in system integrations, database schemas, and application logic. • Mentorship & Code Review: Lead code reviews for performance scripts and artifacts ensuring the team adheres to industry best practices and maintains high-quality test suites. • Deep-Dive Analysis: Utilize advanced profiling tools (e.g., Oracle Flight Recorder, JProfiler) to identify memory leaks, thread contention, and IO bottlenecks.

Hiring Range: Full-Time Equivalent: $110,150 to $137,700 salary commensurate with relevant experience.

Work Model: Hybrid. 3 days in-person required at the discretion of management.

About the Company

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Boston College