Principal Software Engineer – Performance Engineering

hackajob is collaborating with J.P. Morgan to connect them with exceptional professionals for this role.Job DescriptionIf you are looking for a game-changing career, working for one of the world's leading financial institutions, youâve come to the right place.As a Principal Software Engineer at JPMorganChase within the Commercial and Investment Bank Payment Performance Engineering team, you will serve as the technical authority and execution lead for performance engineering across our platforms. You will be hands-on and strategicâdefining non-functional requirements (NFRs) and service level objectives (SLOs), embedding performance into CI/CD, scaling automated performance testing, and driving resiliency, capacity, and user experience outcomes across distributed systems. You will set the bar for performance-first design, partner closely with architecture, SRE, and application teams, and ensure performance risks are identified and eliminated before production.Job ResponsibilitiesDefine and institutionalize application- and endpoint-level NFRs and SLOs, including p95/p99 latency, throughput, ramp profiles, and error budgetsDrive proactive performance engineering through early bottleneck detection, architectural guidance, and capacity modelingServe as the final technical authority for performance sign-offs across platform releasesDesign, build, and maintain automated test suites for load, stress, soak, spike, and capacity scenariosVirtualize partner dependencies and inject faults to validate components when upstream systems are unavailableExpand fully automated, environment-aware performance test execution (on-commit/overnight) with health checks and actionable sanity testsBuild dashboards and alerts correlating performance test signals with production telemetry against defined SLOsProvide actionable reporting on SLO variance, drift, and per-endpoint hotspots using RUM, synthetic, and server-side metricsEmbed performance gates into CI/CD pipelines (pre-deploy smoke, post-deploy validation, regression detection with auto-fail/notify)Lead chaos and resiliency experiments (CPU, memory, network, latency, dependency failures) and validate autoscaling under extreme loadApply AI/LLMs to workload and scenario generation, metrics interpretation, and automated reporting with measurable success guardrailsRequired Qualifications, Capabilities, And Skills15+ years of overall engineering experience, with 10+ years in performance engineering for high-traffic distributed systems (web, APIs, microservices, event-driven, data-centric)Hands-on software engineering experience with Java/Spring Boot and Kubernetes (self-managed and EKS)Deep expertise in workload modeling, queuing theory, and statistical analysis of latency/throughput; fluent with percentile-based SLOs and error budgetsProficiency with load and protocol testing tools such as JMeter and BlazeMeterScripting/orchestration skills in Java, Python, or TypeScript for performance automation and execution controlExperience with service virtualization and fault injection (e.g., WireMock, Mountebank, Toxiproxy), including record-replay and dynamic templatingStrong observability/APM capabilities using Dynatrace and/or OpenTelemetry, plus RUM and synthetic monitoring approachesExperience building dashboards and analysis workflows in Kibana and/or Grafana to drive actionable decisionsStrong CI/CD and DevOps experience (e.g., Jenkins, GitLab, GitHub Actions) including repeatable sign-offs, artifact/version alignment, and environment promotionInfrastructure-as-code and platform delivery experience (e.g., Terraform, CloudFormation) including autoscaling strategiesAbility to partner across architecture, SRE, and application teams to coach standards adoption and drive release readinessPreferred Qualifications, Capabilities, And SkillsExperience with data-platform performance optimization (e.g., Oracle tuning, JDBC pool tuning, Kafka throughput/partitioning, caching strategies)Strong systems and cloud performance background (Linux tooling, JVM tuning, containers, AWS primitives such as compute, ALB/NLB, EKS, networking)Experience with k6 and other modern cloud-native load testing frameworksFamiliarity with service mesh technologies (Istio/Linkerd) and traffic-control patterns (rate limiting, backpressure)Practical application of LLMs for test generation, anomaly detection, or automated reporting in engineering workflowsExperience operating in financial-services scale, low-latency systems, and/or regulated environmentsKnowledge of advanced performance tooling (e.g., perf, eBPF) and production-grade troubleshooting practicesThis position is subject to Section 19 of the Federal Deposit Insurance Act. As such, an employment offer for this position is contingent on JPMorgan Chaseâs review of criminal conviction history, including pretrial diversions or program entries.About UsJPMorganChase, one of the oldest financial institutions, offers innovative financial solutions to millions of consumers, small businesses and many of the worldâs most prominent corporate, institutional and government clients under the J.P. Morgan and Chase brands. Our history spans over 200 years and today we are a leader in investment banking, consumer and small business banking, commercial banking, financial transaction processing and asset management.We offer a competitive total rewards package including base salary determined based on the role, experience, skill set and location. Those in eligible roles may receive commission-based pay and/or discretionary incentive compensation, paid in the form of cash and/or forfeitable equity, awarded in recognition of individual achievements and contributions. We also offer a range of benefits and programs to meet employee needs, based on eligibility. These benefits include comprehensive health care coverage, on-site health and wellness centers, a retirement savings plan, backup childcare, tuition reimbursement, mental health support, financial coaching and more. Additional details about total compensation and benefits will be provided during the hiring process.We recognize that our people are our strength and the diverse talents they bring to our global workforce are directly linked to our success. We are an equal opportunity employer and place a high value on diversity and inclusion at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of any protected attribute, including race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital or veteran status, pregnancy or disability, or any other basis protected under applicable law. We also make reasonable accommodations for applicantsâ and employeesâ religious practices and beliefs, as well as mental health or physical disability needs. Visit our FAQs for more information about requesting an accommodation.JPMorgan Chase & Co. is an Equal Opportunity Employer, including Disability/VeteransAbout The TeamJ.P. Morganâs Commercial & Investment Bank is a global leader across banking, markets, securities services and payments. Corporations, governments and institutions throughout the world entrust us with their business in more than 100 countries. The Commercial & Investment Bank provides strategic advice, raises capital, manages risk and extends liquidity in markets around the world.