Software Development Test Engineer

Job Description

Ford Credit's Tech Team in India is actively seeking a highly skilled and experienced Senior Performance Engineer to join our engineering team focused on building and optimizing our cutting-edge financial applications. As a Senior Performance Engineer, you will be instrumental in ensuring the scalability, reliability, responsiveness, and stability of our platforms which handle high volumes of critical financial transactions and data.

You will lead performance testing initiatives, analyze complex system behavior under load, identify bottlenecks across the entire application stack (code, database, infrastructure, network), and collaborate closely with development, operations, and product teams to implement effective solutions. Given the nature of financial applications, a strong understanding of security considerations and data integrity in high-performance environments is crucial.

This is a senior-level position requiring deep technical expertise, strategic thinking, and the ability to mentor others and drive performance excellence throughout the organization.

Responsibilities

Performance Strategy & Planning:

• Define, develop, and lead the performance testing strategy and roadmap for financial applications, aligning with business goals and technical architecture.
• Collaborate with architecture, development, and product teams to understand performance requirements and non-functional specifications early in the development lifecycle.
• Develop comprehensive performance test plans, including goals, scenarios (load, stress, endurance, spike), test data requirements, and expected outcomes.
  
  
  

Performance Testing & Execution:

• Design, script, and execute various types of performance tests (load, stress, endurance, spike, soak) using industry-standard tools.
• Develop custom test harnesses or scripts as needed to simulate complex financial workflows and transaction patterns.
• Integrate performance testing into the CI/CD pipeline for continuous performance validation.
  
  
  

Analysis & Optimization:

• Analyze performance test results in detail, identifying bottlenecks and areas for improvement across application code, database queries, infrastructure, network configuration, and third-party services.
• Utilize application performance monitoring (APM) tools, system metrics, logs, and profiling tools to diagnose performance issues in both pre-production and production environments.
• Collaborate with developers to pinpoint root causes of performance problems and recommend specific code or configuration changes.
• Work with infrastructure teams to optimize server configurations, database settings, caching strategies, and network performance.
  
  
  

Monitoring & Production Support:

• Define and implement key performance indicators (KPIs) and alerts for production monitoring.
• Analyze production performance data to identify trends, potential issues, and opportunities for proactive optimization.
• Participate in on-call rotations or provide expertise for critical production performance incidents, especially during high-volume periods or major releases.
  
  
  

Capacity Planning:

• Provide input and analysis for capacity planning based on performance test results and production workload patterns.
• Help forecast future infrastructure needs based on projected growth and performance targets.
  
  
  

Tooling & Automation:

• Evaluate, select, implement, and maintain performance testing and monitoring tools.
• Champion automation of performance testing and reporting processes.
  
  
  

Financial Domain Specifics:

• Understand the unique performance characteristics and challenges of financial applications (e.g., high transaction volume, low latency requirements, data integrity, security implications).
• Consider regulatory and compliance requirements as they relate to system performance and auditability.
  
  
  

Collaboration & Business Alignment:

• Collaborate closely with Product Owners, Business Analysts, Software Engineers, to understand complex financial requirements, define precise testing criteria, and prioritize automation efforts.
• Support development teams in troubleshooting and resolving technical issues, particularly those related to core banking integrations, data discrepancies, and test environment challenges.
  
  
  

Qualifications

Must Have:

• 10+ years of experience in performance engineering, with a significant focus on complex, high-transaction systems.
• Proven experience performance testing and optimizing financial applications or similar high-volume, low-latency platforms.
• Strong experience with one or more performance testing tools (e.g., JMeter, LoadRunner, Gatling, k6, BlazeMeter, etc.).
• Expertise in performance monitoring and analysis tools (e.g., Datadog, Splunk, Dynatrace, Prometheus, Grafana, AppDynamics, etc.).
• Deep understanding of system architecture components and their impact on performance (databases, caching, microservices, APIs, messaging queues, load balancers).
• Proficiency in diagnosing performance bottlenecks using profiling tools, analyzing thread dumps, heap dumps, and system metrics.
• Strong scripting or programming skills in at least one language (e.g., Python, Java, Go, Shell, etc.) for test scripting and automation.
• Experience working with cloud platforms GCP and understanding cloud-specific performance considerations.
• Familiarity with database performance tuning principles (SQL query analysis, indexing, etc.).
• Excellent analytical, problem-solving, and critical-thinking skills.
• Experience with containerization and orchestration technologies (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Strong communication and collaboration abilities, with experience explaining complex technical issues to various audiences.
  
  
  

Nice to Have:

• Experience with security testing or understanding of security implications in performance bottlenecks.
• Exposure to Unix and Linux environments.
• Exposure to AI tools like GenAI
• Knowledge on Current Market Trends about the Performance tools , specifically in the FinTech or banking space.
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Virtualization, and Container Orchestration (Kubernetes - K8s) related to setting up test environments.
  
  
  

Preferred Qualification:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Engineering or equivalent work experience
• Min of 5+ years of Performance Engineer
• Min of 5+ years of Performance tester