Performance Center of Excellence Lead

Performance Center of Excellence Lead

Location: United States

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Description

• Performance Center of Excellence Lead

• Location: Remote or Hybrid to Wayne, PA

• Frontline's Performance Center of Excellence Lead partners across Platform, SRE, and product

• engineering teams to raise the performance and scalability bar for the systems that power K-12

• districts nationwide. In this role, you will build and lead Frontline Education's performance

• engineering practice — establishing the standards, tooling, and testing methodology that our

• engineering organization uses to validate that our products perform reliably under real-world load.

• This is a center-of-excellence model focused on organizational capability-building, not large-scale

• team management. You will operate as Frontline's performance engineering authority: leading

• enablement and education across teams, establishing standards and maturity practices, reporting

• on adoption progress, and embedding directly on high-priority initiatives where performance risk

• is highest. You will also manage an existing performance QA practitioner who will contribute to

• hands-on performance testing and tooling work. Success depends on influence, technical credibility,

• and the ability to scale performance engineering practices across teams you don't directly manage.

• The Performance COE Lead will report to the VP of Platform and Architecture and will work in close

• partnership with SRE, Platform Engineering, and product engineering leaders to ensure

• performance is treated as a first-class engineering discipline — not an afterthought validated late in

• the delivery cycle.

Key Responsibilities

• Center of Excellence Leadership

• Define and own Frontline's performance engineering charter, standards, maturity model,

• and enablement framework across the product portfolio. This includes establishing self-

• serviceable playbooks, tooling guidance, and educational resources that allow teams to

• conduct performance engineering independently.

• • Conduct performance maturity assessments of product and platform teams, identifying gaps

• in testing coverage, tooling, and readiness for scale.

• Establish a repeatable framework for evaluating performance risk ahead of major releases,

• customer onboarding events, and infrastructure changes.

• Build and maintain relationships with Platform, SRE, and product engineering leadership to

• ensure performance practices are adopted consistently, not just recommended.

• Standards, Tooling & Methodology

• Select, standardize, and maintain the performance, load, and resilience testing toolchain

• used across engineering (e.g., load generation, observability, results analysis).

• Develop testing methodology that reflects real customer traffic patterns — including

• scenarios like concentrated egress from K-12 district networks — rather than idealized

• synthetic load.

• Define clear performance benchmarks, SLOs, and acceptance criteria that product teams can

• self-serve against.

• Maintain a library of reusable test plans, scripts, and playbooks to reduce duplicated effort

• across teams.

• Author and maintain reusable agentic skills and agents that support automated test plan

• generation, smart load-testing orchestration, and performance analysis—enabling teams to

• conduct performance engineering with AI assistance

• Embedded Engagement

• Embed directly with engineering teams on high-priority, high-risk initiatives — including

• new customer onboarding, major architectural changes, and known scaling pain points —

• to provide hands-on performance testing leadership.

• Lead technical discovery with product and platform teams (and customers, where relevant)

• to uncover performance risks before they surface in production.

• Act as a technical partner during incident retrospectives where performance or scale was a

• contributing factor, translating findings into standard updates.

• Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner structurally with SRE and DevOps on observability architecture, load-testing

• infrastructure design, and operational tooling. Co-design approaches to ensure performance

• engineering is operationalized: observability stack supports performance analysis, load-

• testing environments are reproducible and realistic, and SLOs inform capacity planning and

• incident response.

• Collaborate with product engineering teams early in the development lifecycle so

• performance testing is planned in, not bolted on.

• Represent the performance practice in architecture review and planning forums, providing

• input on scalability implications of proposed designs.

• Continuous Improvement

• • Track adoption of performance standards and maturity progress across teams, reporting

• trends to the VP of Platform and Architecture.

• Stay current on performance engineering tooling, cloud-scale testing practices, and industry

• benchmarks; bring new techniques into Frontline's practice.

• Continuously refine the maturity model and standards based on lessons learned from

• embedded engagements and production incidents.

• Enablement, Education & Standards Communication

• • • • Build and maintain a library of reusable test plans, scripts, playbooks, and observability

• dashboards that teams can self-serve

• Create and deliver performance engineering education (documentation, workshops,

• reference implementations) to scale organizational capability

• Define clear performance benchmarks, SLOs, and acceptance criteria that product and

• platform teams can adopt and measure against

• Maintain a maturity model scorecard tracking adoption across teams and reporting

• progress to leadership quarterly

• Required Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in performance engineering, load testing, or site reliability, with a

• demonstrated track record of building or scaling a performance practice in a SaaS or

• enterprise software environment.

• • Deep hands-on technical expertise with load, longevity, and performance testing tools (e.g.,

• JMeter, Gatling, k6, Locust) and observability/monitoring platforms.

• Strong understanding of distributed systems and cloud architecture (AWS, Azure, or GCP),

• including how network topology, authentication flows, and infrastructure design affect

• performance under load.

• Deep experience partnering with SRE/DevOps teams on observability architecture,

• infrastructure design, and operational tooling; comfort translating between performance

• engineering and infrastructure constraints

• • • • Proven ability to influence without direct authority — experience driving adoption of

• engineering standards and practices across teams you don't manage.

• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to translate technical performance findings

• into clear risk assessments for both engineering teams and executive stakeholders.

• Experience conducting or leading technical discovery, maturity assessments, or audits of

• engineering practices is strongly preferred.

• Experience in K-12 EdTech or another high-concurrency, seasonally-spiky SaaS vertical is a

• plus, given the unique traffic patterns of school district environments.

• Personal Attributes

• Hands-On Credibility: Comfortable moving between deep technical work (writing test

• scripts, analyzing load results) and advising senior engineering leadership.

• Organizational Impact Mindset: Measures success by adoption and capability lift across the

• organization, not just embedded project wins. Comfortable reporting on maturity progress

• and translating technical findings into business/leadership language.

• • Consultative: Builds trust and adoption through partnership and evidence, not mandate —

• critical in a role without direct authority over the teams it influences.

• Detail-Oriented: Notices the gap between what a team believes is tested and what is actually

• validated.

• Pragmatic: Prioritizes the highest-risk performance gaps rather than pursuing exhaustive

• coverage everywhere at once.

• Why Frontline Education

• Frontline Education is a pioneer of school administration software purpose-built for K-12 districts.

• We provide innovative, connected solutions for student and special programs, business operations,

• and human capital management with powerful data and analytics to empower educators and

• administrators. We earn the trust of K-12 leaders across the U.S. by serving as a consistently high-

• performing, forthright partner of school districts through every dimension of the company.

• At Frontline, we value diversity, equity, and inclusivity, and are committed to building a workplace

• that respects, supports, and values the identities of all our employees. We offer a competitive

• compensation package, including a bas