Performance Engineering Lead Specialist Engineer

Job Title: Performance Engineering Lead Specialist Engineer Location: Boise, ID Experience: 12+ Years Employment Type: Contract Interview Type: In-Person or Webcam Job Description We are seeking an experienced Performance Engineering Lead Specialist Engineer to oversee performance engineering activities across enterprise technology systems. This role will be responsible for driving performance strategy, conducting performance testing, identifying system bottlenecks, and ensuring high availability and scalability of applications and infrastructure. The ideal candidate must have strong technical leadership experience, a deep understanding of performance engineering methodologies, and hands-on expertise across performance tools, monitoring technologies, and large-scale distributed environments. Key Responsibilities Lead end-to-end performance engineering and testing efforts for enterprise systems and applications. Define performance strategy, best practices, standards, and governance for engineering teams. Analyze system performance, identify bottlenecks, and recommend tuning and optimization solutions. Collaborate with architecture, development, QA, DevOps, and infrastructure teams to ensure performance objectives are achieved. Evaluate and set up performance testing frameworks, tools, and environments. Develop and execute performance test plans, scripts, workloads, and benchmarks. Utilize APM tools to monitor system performance and provide data-driven insights. Prepare performance test reports and present findings to technical and leadership stakeholders. Support capacity planning, scalability modeling, and forecasting activities. Troubleshoot complex performance issues related to application, database, network, or infrastructure components. Drive continuous performance improvements throughout the software development lifecycle. Required Qualifications 12+ years of professional experience in performance engineering and testing. Proven experience leading performance engineering initiatives in large-scale enterprise environments. Strong hands-on expertise with performance testing tools such as LoadRunner, JMeter, Neoload, BlazeMeter, or Gatling. Proficiency with Application Performance Monitoring tools like Dynatrace, AppDynamics, New Relic, or Splunk. Strong scripting skills (e.g., Python, Shell, PowerShell, Java, JavaScript Deep understanding of cloud environments such as AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. Strong knowledge of distributed architectures including microservices, APIs, containers, and Kubernetes. Experience analyzing performance at database layers (Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, or similar Hands-on experience with CI/CD and DevOps pipeline integration for performance automation. Excellent problem-solving, analytical, communication, and leadership skills. Preferred Skills Experience with performance engineering for financial, telecom, healthcare, or high-transaction systems. Experience working with Kafka, RabbitMQ, or other messaging platforms. Knowledge of observability frameworks including OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, or Grafana. Cloud certification (AWS/Azure/GCP) is a plus. Experience with tuning JVM or .NET runtime, caching frameworks, and load balancing strategies. Exposure to AI-based performance analytics or automation.