Senior Performance / Reliability Engineer

Senior Performance and Reliability Engineer
Position Location: Pittsburgh, PA, 15222 / Strongsville, OH, 44136 / Dallas, TX, 75234 / Birmingham, AL, 35233 / Phoenix, AZ, 85016

Length of Assignment: 4 Months Contract to Hire role

Pay Rate: $65 to 70/hr. on W2 ONLY

Function of the Group: Performance Engineering Team duties.
Industry background: Banking or financial background is a plus.

Roles and Responsibilities:
This role is intended for a senior-level consultant who can immediately engage with engineers, diagnose complex system and application issues, recommend and implement improvements, and elevate the overall technical capabilities of the organization through hands-on mentoring and coaching. The successful candidate will be respected as both a practitioner and a teacher, capable of driving sustainable improvements in performance, reliability, automation, and engineering excellence.

Primary Responsibilities:
1. Partner with engineering teams to design, deploy, and optimize enterprise AI platforms and supporting infrastructure.
2. Perform advanced resiliency and scalability assessments across distributed applications and infrastructure environments.
3. Lead root cause analysis of performance, reliability, stability, and capacity issues.
4. Conduct deep-dive Java JVM heap, garbage collection, memory leak, thread, and application performance analysis.
5. Conduct advanced Client .NET memory, CLR, thread, and application performance diagnostics.
6. Utilize Dynatrace and related observability platforms to identify performance bottlenecks and produce actionable remediation plans.
7. Drive infrastructure optimization initiatives based on performance testing, resiliency testing, fault analysis, and production telemetry.
8. Partner with development, infrastructure, cloud, and operations teams to implement corrective actions and measurable improvements.
9. Design and develop automation solutions using scripting technologies to reduce operational overhead and improve engineering efficiency.
10. Create reusable engineering standards, playbooks, diagnostics procedures, and operational guidance.
11. Support performance and resiliency test planning, execution, analysis, and remediation activities.
12. Provide technical leadership during critical incident investigations and complex troubleshooting engagements.
13. Translate performance findings into practical infrastructure and application improvements with measurable business value.

Mentoring and Enablement Expectations:
1. Mentor engineers on scripting, automation, diagnostics, and performance engineering best practices.
2. Coach teams in the use of Dynatrace and observability-driven engineering practices.
3. Develop internal training workshops and technical deep-dive sessions.
4. Improve engineering capabilities in: PowerShell, Python, Shell scripting, Automation frameworks, JVM diagnostics, .NET performance analysis, Application resiliency patterns, Observability and monitoring.
5. Serve as a technical thought leader and force multiplier across multiple engineering teams.

Must Have Technical Skills:
1. 10+ years of experience in Systems Engineering, SRE, Reliability Engineering, Performance Engineering, Infrastructure Engineering, or a related field.
2. Expert-level knowledge of Dynatrace.
3. Advanced Java JVM troubleshooting, heap analysis, GC tuning, memory diagnostics, and thread analysis experience.
4. Advanced Client .NET diagnostics, memory analysis, and performance tuning experience.
5. Strong experience with distributed systems, microservices, APIs, Kubernetes, and cloud-native architectures.
6. Demonstrated expertise in performance testing, load testing, scalability analysis, and resiliency testing.
7. Strong scripting and automation skills using PowerShell, Python, Bash, or similar technologies.
8. Proven ability to identify, communicate, and implement infrastructure and application optimization opportunities.
9. Exceptional communication, consulting, mentoring, and presentation skills.

Flex Skills/Nice to Have:
1. AI platform deployment and operational support experience,
2. Experience with Kubernetes, OpenShift, Azure, AWS, or hybrid-cloud environments,
3. Experience with LoadRunner, JMeter, or enterprise performance testing platforms,
4. Experience implementing observability strategies and operational excellence programs,
5. Background in Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) practices,
6. Experience building engineering training and mentoring programs.

Education/Certifications: Bachelor's Degree REQUIRED

Interview Process: first round virtual interview, with hiring manager and product owner, second round interview as needed

Hiring Manager Stack Ranking of Importance (Most Important to Least Important): 1. Skills 2. Rate 3. Prior Client Experience 4. Location