Senior SDET - Performance Testing

HighLevel; Texas; Hybrid; USD 110,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

HighLevel is seeking a Senior SDET with 5+ years of experience to drive performance, scalability, and reliability across our product suite. You will shape load-testing strategies, define SLIs/SLOs, and partner with cross-functional teams to ensure production-grade quality.

You will work with modern tools (k6, Gatling, Locust) and observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry) in Kubernetes and cloud environments, while mentoring junior engineers and influencing architectural decisions.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in performance, scalability, or reliability engineering/testing.
• Hands-on with at least one modern load-testing tool (k6, Gatling, or Locust) and realistic workload modelling.
• Experience using observability tooling to isolate root causes across API, database, and queue layers.
• Experience integrating performance tests into CI/CD pipelines with pass/fail thresholds.
• Working knowledge of Kubernetes and at least one major cloud (GCP, AWS, or Azure) to deploy and debug test environments.

Responsibilities

• Performance baselines for critical services with SLIs, SLOs, latency, throughput, and error-rate targets.
• Maintain a shared performance testing framework and production-like environments (Kubernetes and cloud) for product teams.
• Automated performance regression checks in CI/CD with trend reports.
• Lead load, stress, soak, and spike testing and capacity planning before peak events.
• Root cause analysis of bottlenecks across API, database, queue, and frontend layers with DevOps and infra teams.
• Interpret performance metrics and translate findings into actionable engineering recommendations.
• Mentor junior team members and contribute to capability-building initiatives.

Skills

Performance testing

Distributed systems

CI/CD

Observability tooling

Python

JavaScript/TypeScript

Java

SDET

Tools

k6

Gatling

Locust

Python

JavaScript/TypeScript

Java

Kubernetes

AWS

GCP

Azure

OpenTelemetry

Prometheus

Grafana

New Relic

Job description

We are looking for a Sr. SDET with 5+ years of experience to play a crucial role in ensuring the quality, performance, and scalability of our products. We are seeking engineers who thrive in a fast-paced startup environment, enjoy problem-solving, and stay updated with the latest models and solutions. This is a great opportunity to work on cutting-edge performance testing strategies and contribute to the success of our products.

Responsibilities:

• Performance baselines for critical services: SLIs, SLOs, and latency, throughput, and error-rate targets, plus workload models built from production traffic and real customer behaviour.
• A shared performance testing framework and production-like environments (Kubernetes and cloud, test data included) that product-team SDETs can use without starting from scratch, and the evaluation of new tools through PoCs.
• Automated performance regression checks in CI/CD, with trend reports that catch regressions before release.
• Load, stress, soak, and spike testing, and capacity planning ahead of peak events.
• Root cause analysis of bottlenecks across API, database, queue, and frontend layers, using traces, metrics, logs, and profiling, in partnership with development, DevOps, and infrastructure teams.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems, microservices architecture, concurrency, rate limiting and common performance bottlenecks.
• Ability to interpret performance metrics, translate findings into actionable engineering recommendations, and influence technical decisions across engineering teams.
• Supervise and mentor junior team members and contribute to capability-building initiatives to raise the performance bar across the team.

Requirements:

• 5+ years in performance, scalability, or reliability engineering or testing, with examples of finding and fixing bottlenecks in production-scale systems.
• Hands-on experience with at least one modern load-testing tool (k6, Gatling, or Locust), including realistic workload modelling and distributed load generation, and strong programming skills in Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, or Java.
• Experience using observability tooling (for example, New Relic, Prometheus/Grafana, OpenTelemetry) to isolate root causes across API, database, and queue layers, with a solid grasp of REST service performance, concurrency, and caching.
• Experience integrating performance tests into CI/CD pipelines with pass/fail thresholds.
• Working knowledge of Kubernetes and at least one major cloud (GCP, AWS, or Azure) to deploy and debug test environments.

Nice to Have:

• Runtime profiling and thread or heap analysis on the JVM or Node.js (GC behaviour, event-loop lag).
• Frontend performance experience: Core Web Vitals, Lighthouse, real user monitoring.
• Experience applying AI-assisted tooling to test design or result analysis.
• Experience with NoSQL or search datastores and message brokers at scale.
• Chaos or resilience testing, and safe testing in production (canaries, shadow traffic).