Senior Performance Test Engineer / Performance Testing Lead(Only w2)

Active Alliance; Philadelphia (Philadelphia County); On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Active Alliance is seeking a Senior Performance Test Engineer / Performance Testing Lead to drive end-to-end performance initiatives in a Pennsylvania-based environment. You will lead testing strategy across applications, databases, and cloud services, ensuring scalable, reliable systems.

The role requires deep expertise with JMeter, Gatling, K6, and APM tools, plus hands-on experience with AWS/Azure, JVM tuning, and observability platforms. Local candidates preferred for on-site collaboration.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of performance testing experience.
• Strong knowledge of JVM tuning and GC analysis.
• Proficient with AWS/Azure and container services.

Responsibilities

• Perform end-to-end performance analysis across app, DB, infra, and cloud.
• Diagnose bottlenecks using AppDynamics, Dynatrace, Datadog, JFR, YourKit.
• Optimize JVM, GC, threading, DB queries, caching, and microservices performance.
• Design and execute load, stress, soak, endurance, and scalability tests with JMeter, Gatling, K6.
• Analyze metrics and provide recommendations to improve reliability and user experience.

Skills

Performance testing

APM tools

Cloud platforms

SRE/Observability

Tools

JMeter

Gatling

K6

AppDynamics

New Relic

Datadog

Grafana

Job description

Job Title: Senior Performance Test Engineer / Performance Testing Lead (Only w2)

Experience: 12+ Years Required

Location: Pennsylvania (PA) – Local Candidates Only

Responsibilities

• Conduct comprehensive end-to-end performance analysis across application, database, infrastructure, and cloud environments to identify performance gaps and optimization opportunities.
• Diagnose and resolve application bottlenecks using industry-leading APM and profiling tools such as AppDynamics, Dynatrace, Datadog, Java Flight Recorder (JFR), and YourKit.
• Optimize system performance through JVM tuning, garbage collection (GC) analysis, thread management, database query optimization, caching strategies, and microservices performance enhancements.
• Design, develop, and execute performance testing strategies, including load, stress, soak, endurance, and scalability testing using JMeter, Gatling, and K6.
• Analyze performance metrics and provide actionable recommendations to improve system reliability, scalability, and user experience.

Required Skills & Expertise

• Strong expertise in Real User Monitoring (RUM) and Application Performance Monitoring (APM) tools, including AppDynamics (preferred), New Relic, and Datadog.
• Hands-on experience with cloud platforms such as AWS and Azure, including services like ECS, EKS, Lambda, DynamoDB, CloudWatch, API Gateway, and Application Load Balancer (ALB).
• In-depth understanding of SQL and NoSQL databases, query tuning, data access optimization, and distributed caching mechanisms.
• Solid knowledge of Core Web Vitals, browser performance optimization, web rendering pipelines, and CDN performance tuning.
• Experience with frontend performance analysis using tools such as Lighthouse and Chrome DevTools.
• Proficiency in performance test scripting and automation using JMeter, K6, and Gatling.
• Strong dashboard creation, monitoring, and observability skills using AppDynamics, Quantum Metric, ELK Stack, Grafana, and related monitoring platforms.
• Experience in performance engineering for distributed, cloud-native, and microservices-based applications.