Description

Performance Test Engineer

Note: This is a fully remote role that can be located anywhere in the United States. Qualified candidates from all time zones are encouraged to apply.

Position Summary

The Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) team at NWEA is a hybrid development and operations team within our Product Operations group. The primary focus of the SRE team is to maintain the integrity and performance of our continuously integrated platform through understanding the relationships between infrastructure-layer code, functional application pools, network, and software-defined load balancers, Mongo, SQL, and PostgreSQL databases, message queues, and data caches, all running in a mixture of private data centers and Content Delivery Networks. This team uses a mixture of monitoring tools to identify and mitigate possible client-affecting issues.

As part of this team, the Performance Test Engineer develops, configures, and runs the load and stress tests and collects scalability and performance data. Working with the SRE team and adjacent development teams, the performance test engineer analyzes and publishes test results and troubleshoots failures occurring during the tests. The performance test engineer recommends system configuration and tuning improvements based on observations made during the load tests.

Responsibilities

• Analyze the current state of the application and infrastructure, designing appropriate solutions and working with teams to implement them
• Review each entire application stack and execute initiatives to reduce failures, defects, and issues with the overall performance
• Review code base and make recommendations for improving performance
• Maintain performance analysis tools and identify any negative changes to performance and work with the teams to resolve them
• Design, develop and execute automated tests to validate solutions and environments
• Maintain and extend the load test framework including all programs and scripts that prep environments, create data sets, consolidate results, and clean up after load tests.
• Assist product teams to develop and maintain load test scripts and packages
• Assist product teams in constructing meaningful, well thought out load test workload models
• Work with product teams to move performance testing earlier in the development process through micro-benchmarking of individual services
• Help product teams define performance test success criteria
• Execute Load/Performance Tests that integrate workloads from multiple teams
• Perform analysis of performance test results
• Assist in finding and removing performance bottlenecks that prevent NWEA from exceeding its targeted concurrency and SLA goals
• Take initiative to advance the quality, performance, or scalability of our applications, by influencing the architecture or design of our products
• Collaborate with project architects and project lead developers to prove the validity of new software technologies
• Engage and improve NWEA's software development methodology
• Identify and work with the team to implement more efficient system procedures
• Participate in regular meetings, both within the team and across it, to discuss previous accomplishments, upcoming goals and any roadblocks in the way

Skills and Abilities

• Experience with Maven, Nexus, Ant, Puppet, Foreman, Hiera, Continuous Integration, etc.
• Deep Linux systems knowledge and administration background, Windows experience is a plus
• Hands-on experience with system integration technologies such as Web Services, Enterprise Service Bus, Message Queue, etc.
• Hands-on experience with SQL with the ability to apply experience to PostgreSQL
• Understanding of and ability to work within Java
• Demonstrated ability to follow through with all tasks, promises, and commitments
• Ability to communicate and work effectively within priorities
• Ability to advocate ideas and objectively participate in design critiques
• Ability to work under tight timelines in a fast-paced environment
• Good understanding of software design concepts
• Understanding of software development methodologies
• Understanding of Java EE mid-tier System Architecture principles
• Good understanding of AWS Lambda, DynamoDB, Kinesis, API Gateway
• Ability to solve complex problems
• Excellent analytical, troubleshooting, and communication skills
• Experience with log aggregation and data analysis
• Experience with Application Performance Management (APM), Network Performance Management (NPM), and Real User Monitoring (RUM) tools and data are a big plus
• Ability to code in at least one scripting language (Ruby, Python, Lua, JavaScript, etc.)
• Ability to understand and communicate risk as it applies to system reliability and performance
• Ability to support the web platform during off-hours
• Must be able to perform the physical and intellectual requirements of the role, with or without accommodation

Competencies

• Instill trust: gain the confidence and trust of others through honesty, integrity, and authenticity
• Communicate effectively: develop and deliver multi-mode communications that convey a clear understanding of the unique needs of different audiences
• Customer focus: build strong customer relationships and deliver customer-centric solutions
• Drive results: consistently achieve results, even under tough circumstances

Education and Experience

• Minimum bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field; or an equivalent combination of education and experience will be considered in lieu of a degree
• 5+ years of relevant work experience in one or more of the following: Software QA Engineering, Software Development, or Linux System Engineering.
• 2+ years creating and performing Load/Performance tests with Jmeter, CloudTest or LoadRunner, or similar tools.
• Demonstrated experience planning, developing, and collaborating on load test frameworks with one or more of the following: Python, PERL, Java, C++ or similar languages.
• Strong database knowledge preferably PostgreSQL and MongoDB.
• Understanding of Internet protocols and programming, including HTTP, session management, and HTML.
• Experience, preferably extensive experience working in a Linux/UNIX-based environment.
• Familiarity with networking (TCP/IP, DHCP, DNS, firewalls, routing) a plus
• Experience identifying and measuring bottlenecks in multi-tier enterprise applications running on Linux platforms
• Experience in fault-tolerant system design
• Strong written and oral communication skills

About Us

NWEA® is a research-based, not-for-profit organization that supports students and educators worldwide by creating assessment solutions that precisely measure growth and proficiency-and provide timely data to help tailor instruction. For more than 40 years, NWEA has developed innovative pre-K-12 assessments, including our flagship interim assessment, MAP® Growth™; our progress monitoring and skills mastery tool, MAP® Skills™; and our reading fluency and comprehension assessment, MAP® Reading Fluency™. Educators trust our professional learning offerings to accelerate student learning and our research to support assessment validity and data interpretation. More than 11 million students in 146 countries use our solutions to support their learning and growth each year.