Lead Associate Principal, Software Engineering: Software Development Test (SDET) (Performance Testing)

Location: Chicago, United States; hybrid work environment with up to 2 days per week of remote work.

Salary: $122,500–$204,600 annually. Annual discretionary incentive target: 8%–15%.

Company

hirify.global is a systemically important financial market utility providing clearing and settlement services for options, futures, and securities lending transactions.

What you will do

• Define test plans, load profiles, ramp scenarios, and performance baselines for high-volume transaction systems.
• Execute and analyze performance tests with LoadRunner, JMeter, and Gatling, recommending system optimizations.
• Lead disaster-recovery and failover testing across primary, secondary, and tertiary regions.
• Build performance-test automation and CI/CD-integrated pipelines using Python, Java, Jenkins, GitHub Actions, and open-source tools.
• Validate Kafka throughput, replication lag, data consistency, application behavior, and performance SLAs during region-switching scenarios.
• Document regulatory test evidence and mentor quality engineering colleagues on performance and failover testing.

Requirements

• 7+ years of hands-on performance testing and engineering experience, including complex performance test scenarios.
• 5+ years designing and executing failover or disaster-recovery testing across multi-region cloud and hybrid architectures.
• Strong experience with LoadRunner, JMeter, and Gatling, plus Python, Java, and JavaScript automation frameworks.
• Hands-on AWS experience with EC2, RDS, Kafka, performance monitoring, Kubernetes, Docker, and event-driven systems.
• Experience with CI/CD, observability platforms, relational databases, Linux, test management, and defect-tracking tools.
• Background in finance or highly regulated, low-latency, high-availability systems; a bachelor's degree in computer science or an analytical field, or equivalent experience.

Nice to have

• AI/ML-augmented testing, API and contract testing, service virtualization, SRE principles, and FinOps experience.
• AWS or performance engineering certification.
• Experience in the options and futures industry.

Culture & Benefits

• Hybrid work environment supporting work-life balance and employee wellness.
• Tuition reimbursement and student loan repayment assistance.
• Technology stipend for remote work, generous paid time off, and parental leave.
• 401(k) employer match and medical, dental, and vision coverage.

Hiring process

• Submit an application and resume through the hirify.global careers site.
• Receive email confirmation after the application is submitted.
• If selected, schedule an interview with an hirify.global representative.