Senior Software Engineer, Performance | Scalability and Systems Engineering

NinjaOne; Maine; Hybrid; USD 160,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

401(k) plan

Unlimited PTO

Hybrid remote option

Job summary

NinjaOne seeks a Senior Software Engineer, Performance Engineering in the United States to drive performance optimization across the stack, translate usage patterns into benchmarks, and implement data-driven improvements. You will build reusable frameworks and work with Java, Kotlin, C++, Postgres, and AWS, partnering with engineers to fix bottlenecks in code, queries, and architecture.

This is a hands-on, scalable design role with a focus on performance.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field; 6+ years of software engineering experience.
• Strong system design and architecture understanding across components and data flow.
• Experience debugging distributed systems and container-native environments.
• Relational databases experience, PostgreSQL preferred.

Responsibilities

• Investigate bottlenecks and drive optimizations across code, DB, and architecture.
• Design, build, and maintain performance testing frameworks and data generation tools.
• Define and evolve standards for performance optimization, scalability, and measurement.
• Develop and maintain technical docs and architectural decisions.

Skills

6+ years experience

System design

Performance optimization

Cloud platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP)

Scripting (Bash/Python)

Troubleshooting & collaboration

Load testing (k6)

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/CE/IT

Tools

PostgreSQL

k6

Grafana/InfluxDB

AWS

Job description

Description

About the Role

As a Senior Software Engineer, Performance Engineering, you will drive performance engineering, optimization, and performance standards across the NinjaOne organization. You will collaborate closely with software engineers and stakeholders to translate real-world usage patterns into actionable performance insights, ensuring systems that are highly responsive, reliable, and scalable. You will analyze applications, databases, and system-level behaviors, define performance standards and benchmarks, and work with engineering teams to deliver data-driven optimizations that improve throughput, reduce latency, and enhance overall system efficiency. We are looking for a strategic, hands‑on engineer who combines deep expertise in performance engineering with a systems-oriented mindset. You will build reusable frameworks, tooling, and best practices that empower engineering teams to proactively identify and resolve performance challenges, and you will write code to fix them alongside those teams. Please note: this is a software engineering role, not a QA or testing role. You’ll find performance bottlenecks and fix them in code, queries, and architecture.

Location - We are flexible on remote working from home, if you are located in the USA and reside in one of the following states - CA, CO, CT, FL, GA, IL, KS, MA, MD, ME, NJ, NC, NY, OH, OR, TN, TX, VA, and WA. We have physical offices in Austin, TX and Tampa, FL, if you prefer a hybrid option.

• Onsite interviews may be required for this role.

We hire the best software engineers, but experience in our stack can’t hurt: NinjaOne is built on Java, Kotlin, C++, Golang and Postgres, supporting millions of user endpoints and running as a scalable cloud service in AWS. Knowing large-scale datastore bottlenecks, asynchronous application design and client-server architecture will help you.

What You’ll be Doing

• Performance Research and Development: Investigate system behavior to find bottlenecks, analyze the results, and drive optimizations across application code, database, and architecture. Work directly with engineering teams to design, implement, and ship the fixes.
• Performance Frameworks and Tooling: Design, build, and maintain performance testing and data generation frameworks that surface actionable insights, using k6, JavaScript, Grafana, and InfluxDB. Automate these in CI/CD pipelines.
• Performance Best Practices: Define and evolve standards for performance optimization, scalability, and measurement. Partner with engineering teams to shape scalability approaches and performance strategies.
• Documentation: Develop and maintain technical documentation, architectural decision records, and performance standards.
• Other duties as needed.

About You

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Technology, or equivalent work experience.
• 6+ years of experience as a Software Engineer, with hands‑on contributions to production code.
• Strong understanding of system design and architecture: how the components of a system fit together (load balancers, services, datastores, caches) and how data flows through them.
• Strong background in application optimization, query optimization, and performance debugging, with a solid grasp of performance methodology.
• Deep experience with relational databases, including execution plan analysis, indexing strategies, and partitioning. PostgreSQL experience is a plus.
• Experience debugging distributed systems and container‑native environments.
• Experience with asynchronous design and scaling patterns such as message brokers, event queuing, and event streaming.
• Experience with at least one major cloud platform (AWS, Azure, or GCP). AWS is a plus.
• Proficient in scripting for automation and observability (Bash, Python, or similar), and experience building automation and pipelines.
• Excellent troubleshooting and communication skills across technical and non‑technical teams.
• Nice to have: experience with k6 or other load test frameworks, and JavaScript.

About Us

NinjaOne unifies IT to simplify work for nearly 40,000 customers in 140+ countries.

The NinjaOne Unified IT Operations Platform delivers endpoint management, autonomous patching, backup, and remote access in a single console to improve efficiency, increase resilience, and reduce spend. By automating IT and managing all endpoints, organizations give employees a great technology experience at work. NinjaOne is obsessed with customer success and has retained a 98% customer satisfaction score for more than 5 years.

What You’ll Love

We are a collaborative, kind, and curious community.

We honor your flexibility needs with full‑time work that is hybrid remote.

We have you covered with our comprehensive benefits package, which includes medical, dental, and vision insurance.

We help you prepare for your financial future with our 401(k) plan.

We prioritize your work‑life balance with our unlimited PTO.

We reward your work with opportunity for growth and advancement.

Additional Information

• Due to operational policies, NinjaOne is unable to hire for this role within the city limits of Chicago. We will consider all qualified candidates who reside outside of the city proper or are willing to self‑relocate.

Starting pay for the successful applicant depends on a variety of job‑related factors, including but not limited to location, market demands, experience, job‑related knowledge, and skills. The benefits available for this position include medical, dental, vision, 401(k) plan, life insurance coverage and PTO. For roles based in California, Colorado, Maryland, New Jersey, or Washington the base salary hiring range for this position is $160,000 - $240,00 per year.

For roles based in New York, the base salary hiring range for this position is $160,000 - $240,00 per year.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, marital status, veteran status, or any other status protected by applicable law. We are committed to providing an inclusive and diverse work environment.