Performance Engineering Lead #3079

Performance Engineering Lead Contract Length: 12+ Month Contract (with potential extension)Location: Dallas, TX (3-4 days onsite)**The Consultant must be based in Dallas, TX and available for onsite work as well as in-person interviews.**We are seeking a Performance Engineering Lead to drive enterprise-wide performance engineering strategy across platforms and application teams. This role goes beyond test execution and focuses on designing scalable performance frameworks, improving performance visibility, and enabling teams to deliver reliable, high-performing applications that can support both current demand and future growth. The ideal candidate will act as a trusted advisor to development, infrastructure, and testing teams while continuously advancing performance engineering maturity.Qualifications10+ years of experience in performance engineering with deep knowledge of scalability and reliability principlesHands-on expertise with performance testing tools such as NeoLoad and JMeterProven experience evaluating performance tool ecosystems and recommending improvementsStrong understanding of application, API, database, and infrastructure performance analysisExperience with cloud-native performance and scalability testingExposure to APM and monitoring tools such as Grafana and DynatraceExperience working in Agile and Waterfall environments with CI/CD pipelines (GitLab CI a plus)Ability to quickly understand complex application architectures and provide actionable feedbackComfortable working in a hybrid model and flexible to support critical testing activities when neededKey ResponsibilitiesDefine and lead performance engineering strategy, standards, and governance across application teamsServe as a central point of contact for performance testing best practices within the Testing Enablement functionAssess current performance capabilities and identify bottlenecks across applications, APIs, databases, and infrastructureEvaluate, pilot, and implement performance testing tools and frameworks to improve scalability and performance visibilityDesign, develop, and maintain reusable performance test scripts and frameworksDefine SLAs, SLOs, and capacity benchmarks in collaboration with enterprise architecture teamsPartner with project teams to translate business and technical requirements into effective performance test strategiesCreate and promote standardized intake processes for performance testing across new initiativesDesign realistic load models aligned with production traffic and extreme demand scenarios (including storm-related events)Integrate performance testing into CI/CD pipelines and support continuous performance testing practicesCollaborate closely with developers, product owners, and infrastructure teams to identify performance improvement opportunitiesMonitor performance test results and metrics to drive measurable improvements in system reliability and scalabilityStay current with emerging performance testing technologies and recommend enhancements to testing leadershipSupport shift-left and test-driven development practices by enabling teams earlier in the delivery lifecycle