Performance Test Architect/Lead

Location: Middletown, PA
Work Arrangement: Hybrid, currently remote until further notice; one week onsite per month in Middletown, PA when scheduled, with additional onsite activities as required
Schedule: 40 Hours/Week (8 Hours/Day, 5 Days/Week)
Interview: Virtual; additional in-person interviews may be required in Middletown, PA
Contract: Oct 26, 2026 - Jun 30, 2027 (8 Months 5 Days). Historically, these roles are extended for an additional year. Visas Accepted: USC, GC, GC EAD, H1B

Role Overview

The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission is seeking a Performance Test Architect/Lead to define and lead enterprise performance engineering for its Journi program. This position is responsible for performance architecture, load testing strategy, NeoLoad implementation, monitoring, capacity planning, system scalability, and production readiness across SAP, CRM, middleware, APIs, and other integrated enterprise systems. The role requires a professional with extensive performance engineering experience who can establish standards and provide technical direction to testing and development teams.

The position is initially remote until further notice, with required onsite participation at Commission facilities in Middletown, Pennsylvania, including one week per month when scheduled and possible additional onsite assignments during project milestones and post-Go-Live support. Candidates must reside within the Continental United States; Pennsylvania-area candidates are preferred. A full-day onsite orientation and personal equipment pickup are required, with no reimbursement for orientation or interview travel. Candidates must pass the required background checks and complete interviews without AI assistance, scripts, or external prompts.

Primary Responsibilities

• Define and own the overall performance engineering strategy for the Journi program.

• Establish enterprise performance testing standards, governance, methodologies, and best practices.

• Develop workload models using historical production metrics and anticipated business growth.

• Establish non-functional requirements, service level objectives, service level agreements, and performance acceptance criteria.

• Lead performance planning for Solution Confirmation, PI Planning, System Integration Testing, User Acceptance Testing, Go-Live, and Hypercare.

• Review solution architecture to identify scalability risks, performance bottlenecks, and infrastructure constraints early in the software development lifecycle.

• Provide technical leadership for capacity planning and infrastructure sizing recommendations.

• Lead enterprise performance testing across SAP BRIM, SAP Convergent Mediation, SAP S/4HANA, SAP Datasphere, Dynamics CRM Customer Engagement, middleware, REST/SOAP APIs, batch processing, event-driven integrations, customer web portals, mobile applications, IVR, and chatbot platforms.

• Define enterprise load profiles covering concurrent users, transaction volumes, billing cycles, payment processing, toll transactions, financial processing, and customer service operations.

• Review and approve performance test plans, scripts, workloads, and execution schedules developed by performance analysts.

• Define monitoring strategies across application, middleware, SAP, database, infrastructure, and cloud platforms.

• Analyze application response times, throughput, resource utilization, JVM metrics, database performance, middleware queues, API latency, and infrastructure bottlenecks.

• Lead root-cause analysis with development, SAP, CRM, infrastructure, middleware, and vendor teams.

• Recommend application tuning, database optimization, infrastructure scaling, and configuration improvements.

• Validate system readiness for production deployment.

• Lead the implementation and administration of NeoLoad as the enterprise performance testing platform.

• Define reusable performance testing scripting frameworks and standards.

• Establish automated performance regression testing for major releases.

• Develop performance dashboards and executive reporting.

• Present performance status, risks, bottlenecks, and mitigation strategies to executive leadership and project governance boards.

• Document technical and functional designs, diagrams, test plans, test scripts, impact analyses, lessons learned, and best practices using Commission-required formats and templates.

• Follow Commission standards, policies, procedures, and established IT requirements.

Required Technical Skills

• Enterprise Performance Engineering: Deep experience with enterprise performance engineering, load testing, performance architecture, and performance testing strategy.

• Performance Testing Leadership: Advanced capability leading enterprise performance testing initiatives, defining standards, reviewing plans, and guiding execution.

• NeoLoad: Expert-level experience implementing and administering NeoLoad for enterprise performance testing.

• Enterprise Platforms: Strong experience with SAP BRIM, SAP S/4HANA, SAP Convergent Mediation, SAP Datasphere, CRM platforms, APIs, middleware, and enterprise integrations.

• Performance Architecture: Experience architecting enterprise-scale performance testing solutions and evaluating application scalability.

• Workload Modeling: Experience designing production workload models using historical metrics, growth projections, transaction volumes, and anticipated system demand.

• Capacity Planning: Strong knowledge of infrastructure sizing, performance engineering, and scalability architecture.

• Testing Methodologies: Strong knowledge of stress, endurance, spike, and failover testing.

• API and Middleware Testing: Strong knowledge of API performance, middleware behavior, batch processing optimization, and enterprise integration testing.

• Cloud and Hybrid Infrastructure: Knowledge of performance characteristics across cloud and hybrid environments.

• Monitoring and Diagnostics: Strong knowledge of enterprise performance monitoring, diagnostics, system bottleneck analysis, and root-cause investigation.

• Education: Required: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related field.

Preferred Qualifications

• Highly desired: NeoLoad certification.

• Highly desired: Cloud certifications in Azure or AWS.

• Preferred: Residency in Pennsylvania or within reasonable commuting distance of Middletown, PA.