Performance Engineer - Expert

Remote opportunity within the Austin, TX location.

12 month assignment with possibility of extending to 18 - 24 months.

We are seeking a Performance Engineer to improve the speed, scalability, reliability, and user experience of our digital platforms. You will combine performance testing, frontend auditing, observability, and hands-on engineering to identify bottlenecks and drive measurable improvements across applications and infrastructure.

You’ll partner with application, UX, API, platform, and DevOps teams to build performance into delivery workflows, from local development through production monitoring.

What You’ll Do

• Plan and execute performance testing for web applications, APIs, and critical user journeys using tools such as JMeter and LoadRunner.
• Design workload models and test scenarios for baseline, load, stress, endurance, and capacity testing.
• Analyze results, traces, logs, and network waterfalls to identify frontend, backend, infrastructure, and dependency bottlenecks.
• Conduct frontend performance audits using tools such as Lighthouse, WebPageTest, Chrome DevTools, and real-user monitoring platforms.
• Evaluate Core Web Vitals and related metrics, including LCP, INP, CLS, FCP, and TTFB, and recommend actionable improvements.
• Build and maintain performance dashboards, service-level indicators, and actionable alerts using observability platforms.
• Configure and improve synthetic monitoring and real-user monitoring for key pages and user journeys.
• Assess CDN and edge performance, including Akamai configuration, caching policies, cache headers, compression, and content delivery behavior.
• Validate cache behavior across public and authenticated experiences, including HIT, MISS, STALE, and bypass scenarios.
• Develop scripts, utilities, and automation for repeatable performance tests, audits, reporting, and regression detection.
• Integrate performance checks into CI/CD pipelines and help establish performance budgets and release criteria.
• Work hands-on with application teams to implement and verify performance improvements, including frontend and API changes where appropriate.
• Review architecture and design proposals for scalability, resilience, caching, and performance risks.
• Collaborate with developers, UX/UI designers, API teams, and platform/DevOps teams to resolve issues and improve delivery practices.
• Conduct code and test reviews, document findings, and mentor engineers on performance engineering practices.
• Contribute to Agile planning, estimation, and continuous improvement of performance tooling and processes.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• 5 years of experience in performance engineering, performance testing, or software engineering.
• Strong experience designing, running, and analyzing load and performance tests with JMeter, LoadRunner, or comparable tools.
• Experience with frontend performance testing and browser diagnostics, including Chrome DevTools and network analysis.
• Hands-on experience building performance dashboards, monitoring systems, and alerting.
• Working knowledge of web application architecture, HTTP, APIs, browsers, and distributed systems.
• Experience with CDN and caching concepts, including cache-control headers, cache keys, invalidation, and edge delivery.
• Experience automating tests and analysis using scripting or programming languages such as JavaScript/TypeScript, Java, or Python.
• Understanding of Core Web Vitals and performance optimization techniques for modern web applications.
• Experience investigating performance issues across application, API, database, network, and infrastructure layers.
• Strong analytical, debugging, and problem-solving skills.
• Experience with cross-browser and device testing.
• Clear communication skills and the ability to turn technical findings into prioritized recommendations.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Akamai configuration, CDN analytics, caching rules, or edge delivery.
• Familiarity with observability platforms such as Splunk, Dynatrace, Datadog, New Relic, or Grafana.
• Experience with Lighthouse CI, WebPageTest, SpeedCurve, mPulse, or similar frontend performance tools.
• Experience with synthetic monitoring and real-user monitoring (RUM).
• Familiarity with React, Next.js, server-side rendering, and edge-rendering strategies.
• Experience with cloud platforms, containers, and Docker.
• Experience integrating performance tests into CI/CD pipelines.
• Familiarity with A/B testing and measuring performance impact.
• Knowledge of accessibility standards, including WCAG 2.2 AA.
• Experience with REST or GraphQL APIs and headless CMS-driven applications.

“Mindlance is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate in employment on the basis of – Minority/Gender/Disability/Religion/LGBTQI/Age/Veterans.”