Fanatics is seeking a Senior Load & Performance Engineer to own performance engineering for high-scale, real-time, event-driven systems. This role involves designing and executing distributed load tests, building scalable performance frameworks, and ensuring system reliability during peak events.
Responsibilities:
- Own end-to-end performance testing strategy for real-time and transactional systems
- Design and execute load, stress, spike, endurance, and soak tests in production and pre-prod environments
- Define performance baselines, SLOs, and regression thresholds
- Drive shift-left performance validation during design and development
- Design distributed WebSocket load tests supporting 100,000+ concurrent connections
- Architect parallel test execution across multiple Kubernetes pods using CI/CD orchestration
- Model realistic traffic patterns for: Sportsbook odds updates, Bet Builder workflows, Real-time market data streams
- Prevent resource exhaustion issues (OOM, CPU saturation) through smart test distribution and profiling
- Build and evolve K6-based performance frameworks
- Integrate tests into GitHub Actions pipelines with configurable parallelism
- Use Testkube for Kubernetes-native test execution
- Implement dynamic test profile generation (no-code-change test tuning)
- Enable fast iteration during live events without redeploying code
- Implement production-grade security for performance tests using: AWS SSM Parameter Store, CSI Secrets Store Driver, IAM Roles for Service Accounts (IRSA)
- Ensure zero hardcoded secrets, strict environment isolation, and full auditability
- Leverage Datadog, metrics, logs, and traces to: Identify bottlenecks, Validate SLOs in real time, Produce actionable post-test analysis
- Partner closely with backend engineers, SREs, and platform teams
- Translate performance findings into concrete engineering actions
- Influence architectural decisions with data, not opinions
- Act as a performance authority during game days and production readiness reviews
Requirements:
- 7+ years of experience in performance, load, or scalability engineering
- Proven experience testing distributed, cloud-native systems
- Strong hands-on experience with K6 (or Gatling/Locust with willingness to go deep in K6)
- Experience with WebSocket performance testing at scale
- Solid programming skills (JavaScript, Java, Python, or similar)
- Deep understanding of concurrency, async processing, and event-driven systems
- Deep understanding of HTTP, WebSockets, messaging/streaming patterns
- Experience running tests in Kubernetes environments
- Strong skills in performance analysis and root-cause investigation
- Comfortable working in production environments with guardrails
- Experience with sports betting, gaming, financial trading, or real-time data platforms
- Prior ownership of game day / peak traffic testing
- AWS experience (EKS, IAM, SSM, CloudTrail)
- Experience with CI/CD-driven performance testing
- Chaos or resilience testing
- Capacity planning and traffic forecasting
- Familiarity with Testkube or similar Kubernetes-native test orchestration