Principal Performance Engineer

Requirements

Must have:

- 8 years experience in performance testing role - Hands-on experience with tools such as K6, Locust, JMeter, Blazemeter, or similar - Experience testing APIs, web applications, and distributed systems - Strong knowledge of database performance testing (PostgreSQL, MSSQL, Oracle, etc.) - Experience designing production-like test environments - Strong understanding of DevOps, observability, and cloud-native architectures - Ability to influence architecture decisions through performance insights and analysis

Responsibilities:

- Define and implement the organisation-wide performance testing strategy - Architect and build replica production performance environments - Design and execute load, stress, and soak testing across platforms and APIs - Partner with engineering teams to embed performance testing across the SDLC - Analyse performance results and identify bottlenecks, scaling risks, and optimisation opportunities - Ensure applications are properly instrumented for metrics, tracing, and observability - Lead performance governance including benchmarking, drift detection, and SLA validation - Provide technical leadership and mentorship across engineering teams

Company:

We are a fast-growing payments technology company on a mission to deliver scalable, high-performance platforms that power real-world commerce globally. This role offers the unique opportunity to build and shape a performance engineering function from the ground up, working with modern technology and influencing engineering strategy.

We offer a competitive salary of up to £90k plus an annual bonus, fully remote working options across Europe, and an industry-leading benefits package in a culture built on autonomy, trust, and technical excellence.