Performance Test Engineer - Cape Town at DigiOutsource

Purpose of the role

The Performance Test Engineer (PTE) would take on some of the responsibilities of the current Performance Test Team (PTT), ensuring performance testing is carried out across our services & products.

• You, as the PTE, will be assigned to a technology stream, where you will work closely with multiple development teams made up of Developers & QA’s to performance test features before they are released into production.
• The PTE will be tasked with running end-to-end performance test projects with industry-standard tools and present the results back to agile teams to determine how these features and changes will impact the performance of our products.
• You will also be tasked with working closely with Senior PTE’s and the Performance Test Architect to design, plan and implement features of the team’s annual strategy driving forwards innovation within the teams themselves and working with cutting edge technologies to streamline current processes.  Some features include implementation of infrastructure-as-code; automated performance testing with automated analysis and dashboarding; and implementation of performance testing within the products CI/CD pipelines.

Duties will include (but not limited to):

• Identifying upcoming features and projects which require performance testing in development teams
• Running end-to-end performance test projects for different agile teams within the business in the Microsoft Azure cloud
• Performance test environment implementation & optimisation (including costs & infrastructure-as-code) in the Microsoft Azure Cloud
• Elements of building performance test environments, including performance test stubs (mocks)
• Implementation of automated performance testing processes within development teams
• Regular reviews of automated performance testing to ensure everything is running correctly and breaches of non-functional requirements (NFR’s) are thoroughly investigated
• Working with and coaching Junior PTE’s to help them develop their knowledge across performance testing & project management
• Promoting performance testing practices within the business
• Presenting performance test results to development teams and providing recommendations to the teams to improve performance test processes & the application under test
• Working with Senior team members to refine and improve processes within the team

Essential Criteria:

• Previous experience working in a dedicated performance test team
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Excellent project management & stakeholder management skills
• Previous experience using industry-wide performance testing tools (e.g. Microfocus LoadRunner, K6 or JMeter)
• Experience of running performance test projects from requirements gathering to test reporting
• Good stakeholder management skills to produce reports, talk through and present to non-technical audiences
• Experience in Continuous Integration/Delivery
• Experience in testing applications hosted in the cloud, particularly Microsoft Azure
• The ability to manage you’re your own workload and backlog, handling stress effectively
• Experience with an object-oriented programming language (e.g. C#)
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code tools (e.g. Terraform)
• Demonstrates consistent behavior aligned to the Combiined F and Organizational Culture

Desirable Criteria:

• Experience working with JSON
• Experience using Jira
• Experience working in Kanban environments
• Experience working with build & deployment tools
• Experience with Elasticsearch & Grafana
• Experience in coaching and mentoring junior team members
• Experience with the performance test tool K6

Person Specification

• Excellent attention to detail
• Must have a passion for achieving excellence in product quality and reliability 
• Ability to multi-task continuously, handling stress when required
• Capable of working independently and as part of a team
• Be very organised and able to define and follow processes
• Ability to adapt quickly with methodologies, tools, best practices, and processes within specific area of responsibility
• Proficient in utilising quality improvement tools and techniques.
• Be extremely detail-oriented with respect to documentation and communication
• Excellent initiative skills to identify projects and areas within the business that need their expertise and attention