Role: Performance Test Engineer
Duration: 6 months + Possible extentions
Availabilities: ASAP
Location: Italy - Remote project
Language required: English
We are seeking an experienced Performance Test Engineer with strong hands-on expertise in performance testing within AWS environments. The ideal candidate will design, execute, and optimize performance testing strategies for large-scale, low-latency distributed systems. While automation experience is a plus, the primary focus of this role is on performance engineering, scalability testing, and system tuning in AWS.
Key Responsibilities
* Design, implement, and execute performance test strategies (load, stress, spike, soak, scalability, and failover) for a high-performance ad-serving platform (Akka-based Java microservices, <50ms latency, 5M+ concurrent users).
* Build and manage distributed load testing environments on AWS (using EC2, ECS, Lambda, or containerized load generators).
* Model real-world streaming traffic patterns, including burstiness, cache hit/miss scenarios, cold starts, and geo-distributed workloads.
* Develop and execute load tests using Locust (Python) or JMeter, including advanced data parameterization and dynamic correlations.
* Integrate with AWS observability and monitoring tools (CloudWatch, X-Ray, OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana) to analyze system performance and identify bottlenecks across JVM, Akka, network, cache, and database layers.
* Drive performance tuning recommendations in collaboration with development and DevOps teams (thread pool optimization, GC tuning, autoscaling, caching strategies, DB performance).
* Create SLA/SLO performance dashboards, capacity models, and integrate performance gates into CI/CD pipelines.
* Prepare detailed documentation of test scenarios, results, findings, and improvement recommendations.
Required Experience & Skills
* 5+ years of experience in performance engineering and load testing for large-scale, low-latency systems (preferably in adtech, streaming, or real-time data environments).
* Proven ability to meet p95/p99 latency SLAs at high request volumes (millions of RPS).
* Strong hands-on experience with AWS services (EC2, ECS, CloudWatch, Lambda, etc.) in setting up distributed test environments and monitoring performance metrics.
* Proficiency in Python or Java for building performance test frameworks and reusable scripts.
* Solid understanding of workload modeling, synthetic data creation, and distributed performance testing in cloud environments.
* Strong analytical and communication skills — able to translate technical findings into actionable optimization insights.