Senior QA Engineer / Performance & Load Testing / NYC

Job Description
A leading global financial services organization supporting millions of consumer transactions daily is seeking a QA Engineer specializing in Performance and Load Testing to support a major platform integration within its premium global dining division. As the organization brings together two major reservation platforms, this team is focused on ensuring the scalability, reliability, and performance of high-volume, real-time systems.
As a Performance & Load Testing QA Engineer, you'll take a hands-on role designing and executing complex load-testing scenarios across APIs and event-driven architectures. You'll analyze system behavior under heavy traffic, evaluate latency percentiles, throughput, and error rates, and trace performance bottlenecks across application and infrastructure layers. Working closely with engineering teams, you'll help identify system limitations and ensure the platform can support demanding traffic volumes throughout the integration process.
This is an opportunity for an experienced performance testing professional who enjoys deep technical analysis and hands-on problem-solving. The ideal candidate has extensive practical experience with established load-testing tools and a strong understanding of HTTP/API traffic, event-driven systems, and WebSocket communication. This is an individual contributor position focused entirely on technical execution, performance analysis, and helping engineering teams improve system scalability.
This is a long-term contract expected to last at least one year, with the possibility of extension or conversion. The position follows a hybrid schedule, with two to three days per week in the New York City office. Compensation is flexible based on experience and technical expertise.
Required Skills & Experience

• Extensive hands-on experience with at least one established load-testing tool, such as k6, JMeter, Gatling, or Locust
• Strong experience testing HTTP traffic, APIs, and event-driven or WebSocket-based systems
• Proven ability to analyze performance metrics, including latency percentiles, error rates, and throughput
• Demonstrated experience identifying, tracing, and isolating application and infrastructure bottlenecks
• Experience designing and executing complex load-testing and performance-testing scenarios
• Strong understanding of system scalability, high-volume traffic, and performance limitations
• Ability to work as a fully hands-on individual contributor
• Strong analytical, troubleshooting, and problem-solving skills
• Ability to collaborate effectively with engineering teams to investigate and resolve performance issues

Desired Skills & Experience

• Experience supporting large-scale platforms with high transaction volumes
• Experience testing distributed systems and event-driven architectures
• Familiarity with real-time application performance and WebSocket traffic patterns
• Experience supporting platform integrations, migrations, or system mergers
• Experience analyzing system behavior under varying traffic loads and identifying throughput limits
• Background in financial services, consumer platforms, dining, or reservation technology

What You Will Be Doing Daily Responsibilities

• Design and execute comprehensive load-testing and performance-testing scenarios
• Use tools such as k6, JMeter, Gatling, or Locust to simulate high-volume traffic and evaluate system behavior
• Test HTTP/API endpoints and event-driven or WebSocket communication
• Analyze latency percentiles, throughput, error rates, and other performance indicators
• Identify system capacity limits and determine how applications behave under increasing traffic
• Trace and isolate bottlenecks across application and infrastructure layers
• Investigate performance degradation and provide actionable findings to engineering teams
• Collaborate with engineers to optimize system performance, reliability, and scalability
• Support performance validation during the integration of two major reservation platforms
• Help ensure the platform can reliably handle high-volume, real-time traffic throughout the integration process

The Offer

• Long-term contract expected to last at least one year
• Potential for contract extension or conversion
• Flexible compensation based on experience and expertise
• Hybrid work schedule, with two to three days per week in the New York City office
• Opportunity to support a large-scale platform integration within a global financial services organization
• Hands-on technical role focused on performance engineering, scalability, and reliability

Applicants must be authorized to work in the US on a full-time basis now and in the future.