Performance Load Test Architect

Job Title: Performance Load Test Architect / Lead

Location: Remote – with occasional onsite travel to Middletown, PA

Duration: 12+ Months Contract

Job Summary

We are seeking an experienced Performance Load Test Architect / Lead to define and lead enterprise-wide performance engineering and load testing initiatives for a large-scale transformation program. The ideal candidate will have strong expertise in performance testing strategy, workload modeling, capacity planning, application scalability, and performance optimization across complex enterprise applications.

This role requires expert-level NeoLoad experience and a strong background in SAP platforms, CRM systems, APIs, middleware, batch processing, and enterprise integrations. The candidate will provide technical leadership throughout the software delivery lifecycle, from architecture reviews and performance planning through system testing, production readiness, go-live, and hypercare.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and own the overall performance engineering strategy, standards, governance, methodologies, and best practices.
• Develop realistic workload models using historical production metrics, projected business growth, transaction volumes, and concurrent-user requirements.
• Establish non-functional requirements (NFRs), service-level objectives (SLOs), service-level agreements (SLAs), and performance acceptance criteria.
• Lead performance planning across solution confirmation, program increment (PI) planning, system integration testing (SIT), user acceptance testing (UAT), go-live, and hypercare.
• Review solution architectures to identify scalability risks, performance bottlenecks, and infrastructure constraints early in the software development lifecycle.
• Lead performance testing across SAP BRIM, SAP S/4HANA, SAP Convergent Mediation, SAP Datasphere, Dynamics CRM, middleware, REST/SOAP APIs, batch processes, event-driven integrations, customer portals, mobile applications, IVR, and chatbot platforms.
• Define enterprise load profiles for billing cycles, payment processing, financial transactions, toll transactions, and customer service operations.
• Review and approve performance test plans, scripts, workload models, and execution schedules.
• Develop capacity-planning recommendations and infrastructure-sizing strategies.
• Define monitoring strategies across application, middleware, SAP, database, infrastructure, and cloud environments.
• Analyze response times, throughput, resource utilization, JVM metrics, database performance, middleware queues, API latency, and infrastructure bottlenecks.
• Lead root-cause analysis and coordinate performance issue resolution with application development, SAP, CRM, infrastructure, middleware, and vendor teams.
• Recommend application tuning, database optimization, infrastructure scaling, and configuration improvements.
• Lead implementation and administration of NeoLoad as the enterprise performance testing platform.
• Establish reusable scripting frameworks, automated performance regression testing, performance dashboards, and executive reporting.
• Validate production readiness and communicate performance risks, findings, mitigation plans, and recommendations to technical teams and project leadership.
• Maintain comprehensive technical documentation, including architecture diagrams, test plans, test scripts, impact analyses, performance reports, and lessons learned.

Required Qualifications

• 12+ years of overall IT experience.
• 8+ years of enterprise performance engineering and load testing experience.
• 5+ years leading enterprise performance testing initiatives.
• Expert-level, hands-on experience with NeoLoad .
• Experience architecting performance testing solutions for enterprise-scale applications.
• Strong experience with SAP BRIM, SAP S/4HANA, SAP Convergent Mediation, SAP Datasphere, CRM platforms, APIs, middleware, and enterprise integrations .
• Experience designing production workload models using historical performance and transaction metrics.
• Strong understanding of capacity planning, scalability architecture, performance engineering, and cloud/hybrid infrastructure performance.
• Experience with stress, endurance, spike, failover, API, middleware, and batch-processing performance testing.
• Strong application performance monitoring, diagnostics, bottleneck analysis, and root-cause analysis skills.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related field.
• Excellent communication, technical documentation, stakeholder management, and problem-solving skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• NeoLoad certification.
• Azure or AWS cloud certifications.
• Experience developing automated performance regression testing frameworks.
• Experience presenting performance findings, risks, and mitigation strategies to executive stakeholders.