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Performance Engineer Jobs in Atlanta, GA (NOW HIRING)

Gridline

RevOps Engineer

Atlanta, GA · On-site +1

This role is ideal for someone who thinks like a builder, operates like an engineer, and uses AI as ... Optimize Funnel Performance: Run continuous experimentation across messaging, segmentation ...

Speria

QA Performance Team Lead

Atlanta, GA · On-site +1

This role owns the performance engineering vision, ensuring performance validation evolves from targeted testing into a scalable, insight-driven capability. The QA Performance Team Lead sets ...

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How much do performance engineer jobs pay per hour?

As of May 28, 2026, the average hourly pay for performance engineer in Atlanta, GA is $57.80, according to ZipRecruiter salary data. Most workers in this role earn between $47.40 and $65.43 per hour, depending on experience, location, and employer.

What Is Performance Engineering?

Performance engineering is the development of software solutions for specific business problems. As a performance engineer, your responsibilities are to identify issues, whether for a particular company or an industry, and develop software that directly addresses them. To become a performance engineer, you need a bachelor’s degree in computer science or computer engineering, two to five years of information technology (IT) work experience, and excellent problem solving skills. Organizations like HyPerformix offer professional certifications, like their Enterprise Performance Engineering program, which can significantly boost your qualifications. Your additional job duties include performing routine maintenance and service, experimenting with possible solutions in the test environment, and monitoring system performance.

What are the key skills and qualifications needed to thrive as a Performance Engineer, and why are they important?

To thrive as a Performance Engineer, you need strong analytical abilities, a solid understanding of software architecture, and experience with load testing and profiling, often supported by a degree in computer science or a related field. Familiarity with tools such as JMeter, LoadRunner, New Relic, and monitoring systems, as well as scripting languages, is typically required. Excellent problem-solving, attention to detail, and effective communication skills help distinguish top performers in this role. These skills and qualities are crucial for identifying system bottlenecks, optimizing performance, and ensuring a seamless user experience.

What are some common challenges Performance Engineers face when optimizing complex systems?

Performance Engineers often encounter challenges such as identifying bottlenecks in multi-tiered or distributed systems, balancing trade-offs between speed and resource consumption, and ensuring that performance improvements do not compromise system reliability. They frequently work with cross-functional teams, requiring strong communication skills to translate technical findings into actionable recommendations. Staying up-to-date with evolving tools and best practices is also essential, as technology stacks and performance benchmarks continually change.

What is a Performance Engineer?

A Performance Engineer is a professional who ensures that software applications and systems run efficiently and meet performance requirements. They analyze, test, and optimize system performance by identifying bottlenecks, conducting load and stress testing, and recommending improvements. Performance Engineers work closely with development and operations teams to ensure that applications can handle expected user loads and deliver a smooth user experience. Their work is crucial in preventing slowdowns, crashes, and other performance-related issues in production environments.

What is the difference between Performance Engineer vs Software Test Engineer?

AspectPerformance EngineerSoftware Test Engineer
Primary FocusOptimizing system performance, load testing, scalabilityFunctional testing, bug identification, feature validation
Required SkillsPerformance testing tools, scripting, system analysisTest case design, automation, defect tracking
Work EnvironmentDevelopment teams, QA, DevOpsQA teams, development teams
CertificationsPerformance testing certifications (e.g., JMeter, LoadRunner)ISTQB, software testing certifications

Performance Engineers focus on system performance, scalability, and load testing, ensuring applications run efficiently under stress. Software Test Engineers primarily verify functionality and identify bugs. While both roles require testing skills, Performance Engineers specialize in performance metrics and optimization, making their roles complementary but distinct.

More about Performance Engineer jobs
What are the most commonly searched types of Performance Engineer jobs in Atlanta, GA? The most popular types of Performance Engineer jobs in Atlanta, GA are:
What are popular job titles related to Performance Engineer jobs in Atlanta, GA? For Performance Engineer jobs in Atlanta, GA, the most frequently searched job titles are:
What job categories do people searching Performance Engineer jobs in Atlanta, GA look for? The top searched job categories for Performance Engineer jobs in Atlanta, GA are:
What cities near Atlanta, GA are hiring for Performance Engineer jobs? Cities near Atlanta, GA with the most Performance Engineer job openings:
Performance Engineer jobs near you
Infographic showing various Performance Engineer job openings in Atlanta, GA as of May 2026, with employment types broken down into 6% As Needed, 75% Full Time, 6% Part Time, and 13% Contract. Highlights an 91% Physical, 1% Hybrid, and 8% Remote job distribution, with an average salary of $120,221 per year, or $57.8 per hour.
Lead Performance & Observability Engineer

Lead Performance & Observability Engineer

Intercontinental Exchange Holdings, Inc.

Atlanta, GA • On-site

$98.60K - $129.80K/yr

Full-time

Posted 9 days ago

Job description

Overview
Job Purpose
Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. (ICE), the owner of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), is seeking a results-oriented, self-motivated individual for its Clearing Performance Engineering team in Atlanta. This individual will serve as a technical lead within a team of software architects and performance engineers, operating in a cutting-edge technology environment responsible for running critical financial sector exchanges and clearinghouses. The successful candidate will drive performance engineering strategy across multiple platforms, mentor peers, and deliver deep-dive analysis on the most complex and time-sensitive systems in the organization.
You must be technically authoritative, outcome-focused, and capable of thriving in a mission-critical environment where end-of-day processing windows are measured in minutes. This role requires close collaboration with software architects, developers, quant library owners, infrastructure teams, and project managers to ensure our platforms meet the highest standards of reliability, scalability, and throughput.
As a Lead Performance Engineer you will own the end-to-end performance strategy for complex, event-driven Java platforms. You will define testing methodologies, build durable test harnesses, drive observability initiatives, and act as the authoritative voice on performance trade-offs across application, JVM, OS, and hardware layers.
Responsibilities
  • Strategy & Investigation
    • Define and own the performance engineering strategy across multiple critical platforms; set standards for testing approach, tooling, and reporting across the team.
    • Lead deep-dive performance investigations on CPU-bound, multi-threaded Java systems-including analysis at the JVM, OS, and hardware levels.
    • Drive scalability analysis: model how system performance scales linearly (or non-linearly) as data volume and instrument counts grow; produce capacity projections to guide architecture decisions.
    • Lead critical path segregation analysis: identify which operations are time-constrained, propose architectural solutions (e.g., head-start strategies, out-of-band processing), and validate their impact.
  • Observability & Monitoring Framework
    • Design and own a comprehensive observability framework spanning metrics, distributed tracing, and continuous profiling to provide full-stack visibility across platform components.
    • Build and maintain platform-wide health scoring and alerting using Prometheus and VictoriaMetrics; drive adoption of consistent instrumentation and Grafana visualization standards across application and infrastructure layers.
    • Develop custom metrics exporters to surface business-layer signals - including database growth, queue depths, and pipeline latency - alongside infrastructure metrics.
    • Architect and maintain Grafana dashboard ecosystems; establish standards for dashboard organization, datasource governance, and operational visibility across teams.
    • Lead distributed tracing and continuous profiling initiatives across Java application estates; use trace and profile data to complement load test findings and accelerate root cause analysis.
    • Build automated post-test analysis pipelines that correlate load test results with observability data to produce clear, causal performance narratives for technical and non-technical stakeholders.
  • Testing & Automation
    • Design and build robust test harnesses that accurately measure version-to-version performance regressions for compute-intensive components.
    • Tune JVM thread pools, garbage collection, and heap allocation for high-throughput, latency-sensitive processing pipelines.
    • Experience with load generation frameworks (JMeter, Gatling, or custom harnesses); design workloads representative of real production traffic patterns.
    • Create and maintain automation scripts and tooling to simplify repeatable performance analysis tasks.
  • Collaboration & Leadership
    • Act as a technical liaison between performance, development, infrastructure, and operations teams; translate performance findings into actionable recommendations with clear data backing.
    • Champion AI-augmented workflows within the performance team: identify where AI tools accelerate root cause analysis, reduce boilerplate in test harnesses, and surface anomalies in benchmark data - while establishing team standards for validating AI-generated output before it reaches production.

Knowledge and Experience
  • Bachelor's Degree or equivalent in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
  • 8+ years of experience in performance engineering, performance testing, or Java development in high-volume, low-latency, transactional systems.
  • JVM & Application Performance
    • Deep expertise in JVM internals: heap dump analysis, thread dump analysis, GC log interpretation, and memory profiling.
    • Proficiency with Java and scripting languages such as Python, Groovy, or Linux shell for building test harness foundations and automation.
    • Proven ability to perform scalability analysis - projecting how systems behave as data volumes grow and validating linearity assumptions with empirical evidence.
    • Strong grasp of critical path analysis: ability to identify time-constrained operations, separate them from non-critical work, and validate architectural changes that improve throughput within a fixed time window.
  • Observability Stack & Monitoring Frameworks
    • Hands-on experience designing and operating multi-signal observability stacks covering metrics collection, distributed tracing, and continuous profiling across Java application environments.
    • Proficiency with Prometheus and VictoriaMetrics for metrics collection, storage, and querying; experience building health scoring rules, recording rules, and alerting across platform components.
    • Experience building custom metrics exporters to expose business-layer and application-specific signals not covered by standard exporters.
    • Proficiency with Grafana for building and managing operational and performance dashboards; experience with programmatic dashboard management, datasource governance, and multi-team dashboard standards.
    • Familiarity with distributed tracing and continuous profiling tools; ability to use trace and profile data alongside load test results to accelerate root cause analysis.
    • Experience building automated post-test reporting pipelines that synthesize observability data and load test results into actionable performance narratives.
  • Messaging, Load Testing & Event Pipelines
    • Experience with event-driven, message-based architectures (Kafka, IBM MQ, or equivalent); ability to test and profile throughput and latency across event pipelines.
    • Experience with load generation frameworks (JMeter, Gatling, or custom harnesses) and the ability to design workloads representative of real production traffic patterns.
  • Communication & AI Tooling
    • Excellent verbal and written communication skills; able to present findings clearly to both technical architects and non-technical stakeholders.
    • Ability to work across teams with varying levels of performance domain knowledge and build collaborative relationships with application owners.
    • Demonstrated proficiency with AI coding and analysis tools (GitHub Copilot, Claude, Cursor, or equivalent) for performance-specific tasks: generating profiling scripts, writing Prometheus queries, analyzing GC logs, and building test harness scaffolding.

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Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to legally protected characteristics.

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