Lead Associate Principal, Software Engineering: Software Development Test (SDET)
$122,500–$204,600 year
HybridChicago, Illinois, United States
Job Summary
Design and execute comprehensive performance and failover testing strategies across mission-critical clearing, risk, and settlement systems. Define test plans, load profiles, and ramp scenarios for high-volume transaction systems while utilizing LoadRunner, JMeter, and Gatling to analyze results and recommend optimizations. Build and maintain performance test automation using Python, Java, and open-source tools, integrating regression testing to catch performance degradation from code changes. Lead DR testing across primary, secondary, and tertiary regions, validating replication lag, failover triggers, and cross-region data consistency. Develop CI/CD-integrated pipelines for continuous performance validation and maintain LoadRunner scripts and environments. Document methodologies, baselines, and trend analysis to support regulatory audits and ensure testing aligns with PGP compliance and financial market infrastructure regulations. Mentor QE engineers on performance and failover testing techniques while collaborating with development, DevOps, and infrastructure teams on requirements and capacity planning.
Required Qualifications
- 7+ years hands-on experience in performance testing and engineering, including design and execution of complex performance test scenarios
- 5+ years designing and executing failover/DR testing across multi-region architectures (cloud and hybrid environments)
- Strong expertise in performance testing tools: LoadRunner (enterprise scaling), JMeter, Gatling, with ability to evaluate tool trade-offs
- Proficiency in scripting/programming: Python, Java, JavaScript, with ability to develop performance testing frameworks
- Solid hands-on experience with AWS cloud environments, including EC2, RDS, Kafka, and performance monitoring
- Working knowledge of Kubernetes and containerized application performance testing (Docker, Kafka, event-driven systems)
- Experience with UC4 (Automic) job scheduling in test execution and orchestration
- Strong understanding of relational databases (SQL Server, Oracle, DB2) and ability to write queries for performance analysis
- Experience with CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitHub, GitLab CI) and integration of performance tests into automation
- Proficiency with APM/observability platforms (Splunk, Dynatrace, AppDynamics) and correlation of test results with production telemetry
- Working knowledge of Linux operating systems and command-line tools for performance analysis
- Experience with test management tools (Jira, Zephyr, SpiraTest) and defect tracking integration
- Background in finance domain OR highly regulated, low-latency, high-availability systems (clearing, settlement, risk)
- Experience with multi-region testing (primary/secondary/tertiary architectures) with performance validation across regions
- B.S. Degree in Computer Science, an analytical field, or equivalent practical experience required
- 7+ years of experience in the IT industry with 5+ years in Quality Engineering, tool architecture and orchestration including opensource and commercial toolset
- 5+ years of experience in Agile methodology
- 5+ years of experience in integration of Jira and Test management tool
- Strong communication skills, written and oral, analytical abilities, problem solving skills, sound judgment and time management skills
- Experience in creating automation scripts
- Experience in developing automation frameworks
- Experience in developing Jenkins pipelines
- Experience testing critical financial market infrastructure (clearing, settlement, risk management, or exchange systems) or other highly regulated, low-latency, high-availability environments
Desired Qualifications
- Familiarity with AI/ML-augmented testing tools for automated test case generation, self-healing automation, and predictive defect analysis
- Experience with API and contract testing (Postman, RestAssured, Pact) and service virtualization for testing complex distributed and microservices architectures
- Understanding of Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) principles, SLIs/SLOs/SLAs, and how performance engineering feeds operational resilience metrics
- Experience with observability/APM platforms (Splunk, Dynatrace, AppDynamics, AWS Vantage, Logic Monitor) and correlating test results with production telemetry
- Experience testing multi region (primary/secondary/tertiary) hybrid architecture across cloud and on-premise
- Familiarity with FinOps or cost-aware performance engineering practices in cloud environments
- Experience in the Options and Futures industry is preferred
- AWS certification and/or performance engineering certification preferred
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