Archie Mitchell, Software Engineering Manager for P4 (Helix Core) at Perforce, is seeking a Principal Software Engineer in Test I to join the team. A Principal Software Engineer in Test evaluates and optimizes the performance of software, hardware, and systems to ensure they are fast, reliable, and efficient. Their responsibilities include identifying bottlenecks, designing solutions, testing performance under various loads, collaborating with development teams to improve the system's overall architecture and user experience, and evaluating software functionality for performance, including CPU, memory, and I/O usage.
Responsibilities:
• Performance analysis: Identify and analyze performance issues and bottlenecks across system layers, from applications and databases to infrastructure and networking.
• Solution development: Develop software or automation solutions to address performance problems and improve system efficiency.
• Performance testing: Design, script, run, and analyze performance tests to simulate different load conditions and validate non-functional requirements.
• Collaboration: Work closely with development, infrastructure, and product teams to set performance goals and implement improvements.
• Monitoring: Monitor systems after deployment to ensure ongoing performance and adherence to Service Level Objectives (SLOs) and
• Service Level Agreements (SLAs).
• Optimization: Influence architectural and design decisions to prioritize key performance goals, such as latency and throughput.
• Customer Support: Simulate, reproduce, and troubleshoot production performance issues.
• Performance Lab Support: servicing data center hardware and upgrading software.
• Dealing with ambiguity
• Interpersonal savvy
• Organizational skills
• Learning Agility
Requirements:
• Problem-solving: Strong analytical and problem-solving skills to tackle complex performance challenges.
• AI first mindset and proven proficiency in using AI for testing
• Domain knowledge: Understanding of the business domain to effectively communicate with stakeholders and developers.
• Expertise in cross-platform Operating Systems (Linux/UNIX/Mac OSX/Windows), filesystems, databases, and networking.
• Software knowledge: C/C++, Perl, Rust exposure; Linux OS, JMeter, BlazeMeter knowledge; system tools: strace, lsof, netstat, vmstat, and graphing.
• 10+ years of industry-level software performance engineering experience.
• 10+ years of experience with high-level programming languages, with a preference for C++/Rust.
• Education: A bachelor's degree in computer science, software engineering, or a related field is typically required.
All employees are expected to demonstrate AI fluency appropriate to their role and level, including responsible use of AI tools, sound judgment, and adherence to company AI governance and security policy standards.
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