Overview

Senior Performance Test Engineer – City of Bristol

We are looking for a Senior Performance Test Engineer to join our community of tech experts in DWP Digital. We are using fresh ideas and leading-edge tech to build and maintain digital solutions used by nearly every person in the UK, every day and at key moments in their lives. DWP is the UK's largest government department. We help people into work and make payments worth over £195bn a year to support and empower millions of people.

What you get — Pay up to £71,017, plus 28.97% employer pension contributions, hybrid working, flexible hours, and great work life balance.

Responsibilities

• Lead performance testing across key services in an agile team with a pragmatic, strategic mindset focused on systems scalability and sustainability.
• Test performance of APIs, UIs, microservices and enterprise databases (e.g., MongoDB, PostgreSQL, Oracle).
• Identify performance bottlenecks across application and infrastructure layers and propose improvements.
• Apply strong knowledge of performance testing tools (JMeter and K6) and performance monitoring tools (Grafana, Kibana, Kiali, Prometheus, AWS CloudWatch).
• Apply IaC and modern DevOps practices in performance testing activities.

You and your role

If you're passionate about ensuring systems run smoothly under pressure and want to help build services that millions rely on, this could be the role for you. You will be part of an agile, forward-thinking team working on high-impact projects. Your job is to ensure our systems are fast, reliable and ready for anything. You will lead performance testing across key services, work closely with developers and architects, and contribute to test automation and CI/CD integration. This is a hands-on role where you will shape strategy, mentor others and help us stay ahead of the curve. You should be comfortable with tools like JMeter or K6, have experience with AWS and Kubernetes, and be proficient with Git pipelines.

If you love solving problems, spotting bottlenecks and making things better, we want to hear from you.

Details, Wages & Perks

Location: You will join us in one of our digital hubs in Birmingham, Blackpool, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle or Sheffield, whichever is most convenient for you.

Hybrid Working: Hybrid model — some time at home and some time in a hub.

Pay: Up to £71,017 per year.

Pension: Civil service pension with employer contributions worth 28.97% (value over £16,000 per year).

Holidays: 26 days starting, increasing to 31 days with service; up to 3 extra flexi days per month; public holidays included.

Benefits: Broad work-life balance package including flexible hours, volunteering time, wellbeing and development opportunities.

• An award-winning environment and culture
• Flexible working and flex-friendly policies
• Time off volunteering and charitable giving
• Inclusive environment with initiatives to bring your authentic self to work
• Discounts and savings on shopping and activities
• Interest-free loans for bike or season ticket
• Professional development, coaching, mentoring and career progression opportunities

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