Senior Performance Test Engineer - Companies House - HEO

Location

Remote working (anywhere in the UK)

About the job

Job summary

This is an exciting opportunity within the Digital Services team at Companies House. You will be joining us at a time of transformation, playing a key role in shaping the future of our testing and quality assurance approach. We follow Agile methodologies and foster a culture of continuous improvement.

We are looking for an enthusiastic Senior Performance Test Engineer with strong technical skills, capable of coaching and mentoring other testers. You will oversee performance testing efforts, ensuring our systems are scalable, reliable, and performant under load.

As part of our Non-functional testing team, you will work collaboratively with scrum, dev-ops, and support teams, overseeing performance testing and ensuring our systems meet the highest quality standards. You will advocate for performance excellence in non-functional testing and explore frameworks and methodologies to enhance service delivery.

Watch this video to find out more about working in Digital at Companies House

This is a rewarding role within the Test Team and provides an opportunity to contribute to the success of existing and future services provided by Companies House.

Companies House offers a flexible and welcoming culture that promotes a healthy work life balance as well as a proactive approach to wellbeing that allows us to be our best at work.  We recognise that people are the key to our success so offer a fantastic benefits package including flexible working with no core hours, 30 days annual leave, 8 bank holidays and 1 privilege day as well as enrolment into the Civil Service Pension scheme with a contribution rate averaging 28%.   

Find out more about what a great place Companies House is to work

Please note:

• Companies House cannot offer Visa sponsorship to candidates through this campaign. 
• Remote contracts will only be offered to successful candidates who are not within a commutable distance to our Cardiff, Belfast or Edinburgh offices. If you are located in a reasonable distance to one our offices, you will receive a hybrid contract aligned to one of our offices. 

Please see 'Things you need to know' and 'Where will you be working' sections below for more information.  

Job description

As a practitioner level Senior Performance Test Engineer, you will: 

• Design, implement, and execute performance testing strategies that align with business and user requirements, contributing to the overall test and quality planning efforts.
• Take ownership of performance testing within the automated pipeline, primarily using JMeter integrated with our CI/CD process (Concourse).
• Collaborate with teams across Companies House to champion a performance-first mindset throughout the development lifecycle.
• Analyse system performance, using tools such as Grafana, identify bottlenecks, and work closely with business analysts, developers, architects, and DevOps engineers to optimise performance.
• Establish and maintain performance baselines, stress testing, load testing, and scalability testing frameworks.
• Drive best practices and mentor other testers in performance testing techniques and tools.
• Research, recommend, and implement emerging tools to improve the efficiency and accuracy of performance testing.
• Document, and maintain performance testing standards, best practices, methodologies, runbooks, and findings using collaboration platforms such as Confluence, SharePoint, or other designated tools. Ensure knowledge is effectively shared and accessible across relevant teams. 

The Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework will help you find out what a test engineer in government does and the skills you need. 

Person specification

We are looking for the following, which will be assessed at sift, technical stage and interview.  

• Certification in ISTQB, ISEB, or equivalent experience in performance testing. 
• 18 months+ hands-on experience with JMeter, Gatling, k6, or similar. 
• Proficiency in at least one mainstream programming language (e.g., Java, JavaScript, Python). 
• Experience coaching and mentoring others, with strong interpersonal skills to foster a culture of collaboration and learning. 
• Working experience with databases (MongoDB, Oracle, SQL, InfluxDB). 
• Familiarity with monitoring and observability tools (e.g., New Relic, Grafana, Prometheus, or Datadog). 
• Proficient version control experience, preferably Git. 
• Experience testing stand-alone services as well as complex systems built of many microservices / sub-systems.  
• Experience testing at UI, API, as well as back-end levels. 
• Knowledge of AWS cloud environments and performance testing in cloud-based architectures. 
• Knowledge of containerisation tools (Docker, Kubernetes). 
• Experience with CI/CD tools (e.g., Jenkins, Concourse, GitHub Actions) to integrate performance testing. 
• Familiarity with message brokers (Kafka, RabbitMQ)  
• Exposure to accessibility and reliability testing principles. 

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Making Effective Decisions
• Managing a Quality Service
• Working Together
• Seeing the Big Picture

Technical skills

We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

• Performance testing (using JMeter)