Performance Engineer - Open Source

About the Role

This opportunity is provided on behalf of an external partner based in Ireland seeking a dedicated Performance Engineer focusing on open source technologies. The position targets an outstanding engineer passionate about enhancing software performance, accuracy, scalability, and operational efficiency across diverse technology layers.

The engineer will dive deep into open source systems encompassing low-level infrastructure, including kernels, runtimes, databases, applications, and web technologies. This role blends meticulous technical analysis with practical engineering to spot bottlenecks and implement impactful performance improvements.

Responsibilities include contributing to shared tools, measurement frameworks, dashboards, testing environments, and analytical platforms that bolster engineering excellence across different teams. Furthermore, you will have a key role in fostering a robust performance culture through mentorship, educational initiatives, technical leadership, and knowledge dissemination.

Key Duties

• Lead efforts to enhance software performance, scalability, efficiency, and reliability within defined engineering projects.
• Investigate and analyze systems and code at multiple layers in the technology stack to uncover performance issues and optimization opportunities.
• Partner with global engineering teams and open source communities to tackle complex technical problems.
• Develop and maintain common tools and infrastructure to assist in performance profiling, benchmarking, and reporting.
• Improve testing frameworks and pipelines to allow greater observability and verification of system behaviors.
• Define and advocate for effective performance engineering practices and analytical methods.
• Provide mentorship, training, and skill development to nurture a high-performance engineering mindset.
• Directly resolve technical challenges while influencing teams through leadership and sharing expertise.
• Review code and architecture focusing on performance, efficiency, and scalability.
• Optimize performance across various hardware architectures, CPUs, cloud platforms, runtimes, and system components.
• Disseminate valuable insights, tools, and best practices to strengthen performance engineering broadly.

Candidate Profile and Requirements

• Outstanding academic achievements both at secondary and university education levels.
• Possession of a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, or a related technical field.
• Proven initiative or professional background in boosting software performance, scalability, efficiency, or accuracy.
• Strong Linux expertise, especially with Debian or Ubuntu distributions.
• Capability to deeply comprehend complex systems and analyze performance across multiple technology stack layers.
• Effective written and spoken English communication skills, including presentation abilities.
• Confidence to engage constructively by challenging ideas, providing feedback, and expressing technical viewpoints openly.
• Demonstrated ownership of challenging technical problems and achievement of excellent outcomes.
• Leadership qualities with dedication to mentoring and elevating team technical competencies.
• Tech enthusiasm illustrated through personal projects, contributions to open source, or similar activities.
• Excellent interpersonal traits such as curiosity, flexibility, responsibility, and self-motivation.
• Goal-oriented work ethic with a strong focus on meeting commitments and continuous improvement.
• Ability to work effectively within culturally and geographically diverse global teams.
• Willingness and ability to participate in international travel twice yearly for company events lasting up to two weeks.

Preferred Technical Knowledge

• Understanding of low-level CPU architecture and assembly language concepts including caches, registers, vectorization, and memory behavior.
• Experience with kernel performance components like scheduling, context switching, and hardware acceleration.
• Skills in distributed systems performance analysis, tracing, and debugging.
• Knowledge of compiler optimization techniques such as profile-guided optimizations and assembly inspection.
• Runtime performance tuning for languages like Golang, Python, JVM platforms, and Node.js.
• Database performance assessment including query plans, indexing strategies, data modeling, and monitoring.
• Insights into web browser and application performance involving JavaScript, web frameworks, tracing tools, and CSS optimization.
• Experience with performance profiling tools such as eBPF, D-Trace, or flamegraphs.
• Familiarity with benchmarking suites like the Phoronix Test Suite.
• Development of testing harnesses using languages such as C, C++, Rust, Python, Golang, Node.js, or JavaScript.

Benefits

• Annual performance-based bonus or commission on top of base salary.
• Compensation packages adjusted according to geographic factors, experience, and performance.
• Regular salary reviews annually, with more frequent assessments for graduates and junior associates.
• Fully remote work setup with biannual in-person team meetings and sprints.
• Annual personal development budget of USD 2,000 to support learning and growth.
• Recognition programs and performance incentives.
• Paid annual leave entitlements.
• Parental leave provisions including maternity and paternity support.
• Access to Employee Assistance Programs for support.
• Travel opportunities to global company events and international meetups.
• Priority Pass lounge access and travel upgrade benefits for qualifying long-haul trips.
• Exposure to working across a broad spectrum of open source technologies with a distributed international engineering community.