Performance Engineer [AQ-21214]

Aquent; Southlake (TX); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Aquent, partnering with a leading financial services firm, is seeking a Senior Performance Engineer to optimize a Java-based trading platform. You will independently plan and execute initiatives to improve latency, scalability, reliability, and resiliency across the ecosystem.

You will build workloads, diagnostic tools, and automation, analyze JVM behavior and systems, and translate findings into concrete recommendations for code, configuration, and infrastructure.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science or engineering.
• 5+ years of experience in performance engineering, scalability, software engineering, or production performance analysis.
• Strong hands-on experience with performance, scalability, failover, recovery, and resiliency testing.
• At least 2 years of hands-on Java development experience.
• Deep Core Java knowledge, including JVM internals, concurrency, multithreading, memory management, garbage collection, and latency.
• Ability to analyze source code and recommend code-level improvements.
• Proficiency in reading source code and diagnosing bottlenecks using dumps, logs, profilers, metrics, and observability tools.
• Experience building workload generators, utilities, mock services, or automation with Java, Scala, Python, shell, JMeter, Gatling, or similar tools.
• Strong knowledge of Linux, databases, application servers, caching, connection pools, distributed systems, and networks.
• Ability to create workloads, baselines, thresholds, capacity measures, acceptance criteria, SLOs, SLAs, and KPIs.
• Demonstrated ability to provide evidence-based code, configuration, capacity, reliability, and design recommendations.
• Good experience in using Splunk, Grafana (or other monitoring tools).
• Experience in testing resiliency solutions by updating CircuitBreakers, Shapers, LoadBalancers & Failover configurations.
• Experience with troubleshooting and diagnosing JVM issues (e.g., thread dumps, garbage collection, and memory management).
• Understanding of performance best practices, key performance metrics, and statistics.
• Ability to manage priorities effectively and collaborate with distributed teams.

Responsibilities

• Independently plan and deliver performance, scalability, resiliency, and capacity validation for assigned systems.
• Deeply understand system architecture, business flows, dependencies, workloads, and production behavior to inform performance strategies.
• Collaborate with partner teams to define clear requirements, workloads, acceptance criteria, and comprehensive reports.
• Develop robust performance test scripts, workload generators, mock services, frameworks, and automation tools.
• Execute a wide range of tests including load, stress, endurance, scalability, failover, recovery, degradation, and resiliency tests.
• Conduct in-depth analysis of source code, JVM behavior, system resources, databases, networks, logs, metrics, and end-to-end latency to pinpoint issues.
• Formulate and validate recommendations for code, configuration, infrastructure, database, capacity, design, and resiliency improvements (e.g., CircuitBreakers, Shapers, LoadBalancers & Failover).
• Leverage production behavior as the baseline for workload design, capacity planning, risk analysis, and validation.
• Maintain essential dashboards, reports, diagnostic tools, runbooks, frameworks, and workload libraries.
• Evaluate and integrate new testing, profiling, observability, and resiliency tools to enhance capabilities.
• Utilize approved automation and AI tools to improve scripting, analysis, documentation, and diagnostics processes.
• Clearly communicate results, identified risks, actionable recommendations, and open issues to stakeholders.

Education

Bachelor's degree in computer science or engineering

Job description

Aquent is partnering with a leading financial services firm, a powerhouse in the industry known for its innovative technology and commitment to client success. This is an incredible opportunity to join a team that is at the forefront of ensuring the speed, reliability, and resilience of critical financial platforms. Your expertise will directly impact the performance and stability of systems used by millions, driving an exceptional experience for users and contributing to the firm’s continued leadership in the market.

About the Role: Performance Engineer

Are you a passionate Performance Engineer with a deep understanding of Java and a drive to optimize complex systems? We are seeking a Senior Performance Engineer to join a dynamic team focused on elevating the performance and resilience of a cutting‑edge, Java‑based trading platform. In this pivotal individual‑contributor role, you will independently plan and execute initiatives that directly enhance latency, scalability, reliability, and resiliency across the entire ecosystem. Your work will be crucial in identifying and resolving performance bottlenecks, ensuring our platforms operate at peak efficiency and stability.

You will be instrumental in building innovative workloads and diagnostic tools, diving deep into code and system behavior to uncover performance inhibitors. Your recommendations will span client, server, gateway, infrastructure, and cloud environments, directly influencing architectural decisions and system design. This is a chance to make a tangible impact, shaping the future of high‑performance financial technology.

Key Responsibilities

• Independently plan and deliver performance, scalability, resiliency, and capacity validation for assigned systems.
• Deeply understand system architecture, business flows, dependencies, workloads, and production behavior to inform performance strategies.
• Collaborate with partner teams to define clear requirements, workloads, acceptance criteria, and comprehensive reports.
• Develop robust performance test scripts, workload generators, mock services, frameworks, and automation tools.
• Execute a wide range of tests including load, stress, endurance, scalability, failover, recovery, degradation, and resiliency tests.
• Conduct in‑depth analysis of source code, JVM behavior, system resources, databases, networks, logs, metrics, and end‑to‑end latency to pinpoint issues.
• Formulate and validate recommendations for code, configuration, infrastructure, database, capacity, design, and resiliency improvements (e.g., CircuitBreakers, Shapers, LoadBalancers & Failover).
• Leverage production behavior as the baseline for workload design, capacity planning, risk analysis, and validation.
• Maintain essential dashboards, reports, diagnostic tools, runbooks, frameworks, and workload libraries.
• Evaluate and integrate new testing, profiling, observability, and resiliency tools to enhance capabilities.
• Utilize approved automation and AI tools to improve scripting, analysis, documentation, and diagnostics processes.
• Clearly communicate results, identified risks, actionable recommendations, and open issues to stakeholders.

Must‑Have Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science or engineering.
• 5+ years of experience in performance engineering, scalability, software engineering, or production performance analysis.
• Strong hands‑on experience with performance, scalability, failover, recovery, and resiliency testing.
• At least 2 years of hands‑on Java development experience.
• Deep Core Java knowledge, including JVM internals, concurrency, multithreading, memory management, garbage collection, and latency.
• Ability to analyze source code and recommend code‑level improvements.
• Proficiency in reading source code and diagnosing bottlenecks using dumps, logs, profilers, metrics, and observability tools.
• Experience building workload generators, utilities, mock services, or automation with Java, Scala, Python, shell, JMeter, Gatling, or similar tools.
• Strong knowledge of Linux, databases, application servers, caching, connection pools, distributed systems, and networks.
• Ability to create workloads, baselines, thresholds, capacity measures, acceptance criteria, SLOs, SLAs, and KPIs.
• Demonstrated ability to provide evidence‑based code, configuration, capacity, reliability, and design recommendations.
• Good experience in using Splunk, Grafana (or other monitoring tools).
• Experience in testing resiliency solutions by updating CircuitBreakers, Shapers, LoadBalancers & Failover configurations.
• Experience with troubleshooting and diagnosing JVM issues (e.g., thread dumps, garbage collection, and memory management).
• Understanding of performance best practices, key performance metrics, and statistics.
• Ability to manage priorities effectively and collaborate with distributed teams.

Preferred Qualifications That Set You Apart

• Experience with real‑time financial systems.
• Familiarity with Google Cloud, Kubernetes, or Docker.
• Experience with AI‑assisted analysis, LLM tools, or intelligent automation.
• Usage experience of AI tools with Visual Studio or IntelliJ IDEA.