Director - Performance & Reliability

Test Director - Performance and Reliability Position Overview We seek a Head of Performance & Reliability Engineering to lead our performance testing, performance engineering, chaos testing, and system reliability practices for our flagship RUN Powered by ADP® product. This role will define the vision, strategy, and execution for building highly performant, resilient, scalable products. The successful candidate will work cross-functionally with product development, engineering, DevOps, and infrastructure teams to ensure our platforms meet demanding performance SLAs and can gracefully withstand failures. Key Responsibilities Strategic Leadership ∙ Define and execute the organization’s performance and reliability strategy across applications, platforms, and services. ∙ Establish and champion standards, frameworks, and best practices for performance engineering, load/soak/stress/spike testing, chaos testing, and observability. ∙ Partner with product development, architecture, and engineering leaders to embed performance and resilience objectives into the software development life cycle (SDLC). Performance Engineering & Testing ∙ Lead the design, execution, and analysis of performance tests (load, stress, spike, soak). ∙ Drive adoption of performance engineering practices: code profiling, architectural reviews, capacity planning, and proactive bottleneck identification. ∙ Oversee tooling strategy (e.g., LoadRunner, NeoLoad, Locust, k6) and optimize test automation in CI/CD pipelines. Chaos Engineering & Reliability ∙ Establish and scale a chaos testing program to validate resilience against system failures, network disruptions, and dependency outages. ∙ Partner with SREs and platform teams to define SLOs, SLIs, and error budgets that align with business outcomes. ∙ Drive continuous improvement in incident detection, MTTR, and root cause analysis. Observability & APM ∙ Implement and evolve observability practices across metrics, logs, and distributed tracing. ∙ Drive adoption of APM tools (e.g., Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic) to enable actionable insights during performance and chaos tests. ∙ Ensure 95% of critical user journeys and tier-1 services are monitored end-to-end. Team Leadership & Culture ∙ Build, mentor, and lead a team of performance engineers, testers, and reliability specialists. ∙ Foster a culture of proactive performance and resilience ownership across engineering teams. ∙ Advocate for performance and reliability in executive forums, influencing technology and product direction. Qualifications Required ∙ 10 years of experience in performance engineering, performance testing, or site reliability engineering (SRE). ∙ 5 years in leadership roles, proven to build and lead high-performing teams. ∙ Deep expertise with performance testing methodologies (load, stress, spike, soak). ∙ Hands-on knowledge of performance testing tools (e.g., LoadRunner, NeoLoad, Locust, k6, JMeter). ∙ Strong experience in chaos engineering practices and tools (e.g., Gremlin, Chaos Monkey, Litmus). ∙ Expertise in observability and APM platforms (Datadog, Dynatrace, AppDynamics, New Relic, OpenTelemetry). ∙ Strong background in distributed systems, cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), and microservices. ∙ Excellent communication skills, with the ability to influence executives and engineers. Preferred ∙ Experience with large-scale user load simulation (1M VUs). ∙ Familiarity with AI-driven testing approaches (e.g., NeoLoad MCP, Copilot-assisted scripting). ∙ Experience with DevOps/CI-CD performance integration. ∙ Proven track record of improving system scalability, resilience, and cost-efficiency.

Location: Cambridgeshire, Cambridgeshire, GB

Posted Date: 11/3/2025