Performance Engineer

Who We Are:

At VML, we are a beacon of innovation and growth in an ever-evolving world. Our heritage is built upon a century of combined expertise, where creativity meets technology, and diverse perspectives ignite inspiration. With the merger of VMLY&R and Wunderman Thompson, we have forged a new path as a growth partner that is part creative agency, part consultancy, and part technology powerhouse. 

Our global family now encompasses over 30,000 employees across 150+ offices in 64 markets, each contributing to a culture that values connection, belonging, and the power of differences.  Our expertise spans the entire customer journey, offering deep insights in communications, commerce, consultancy, CRM, CX, data, production, and technology. We deliver end-to-end solutions that result in revolutionary work. 

The opportunity:

We are looking for a Senior Performance QA to join our engineering team and help define, expand, and mature our performance testing capability.
A highly motivated individual with strong analytical skills, excellent attention to detail, and the ability to quickly understand complex technical environments. This is a hands-on role where you will shape our performance testing strategy, evolve the current landscape, and provide deep technical reporting to guide engineering decisions.

What you’ll be doing:

• Leading the end-to-end performance testing function for the project.
• Understanding the existing performance test landscape and identifying gaps, risks, and opportunities for improvement.
• Expanding the Python/Locust-based performance test suite, including designing new test scenarios, workloads, and API coverage.
• Help drive Shift Left Performance testing.
• Driving performance script development, execution, and detailed analysis of test results.
• Producing clear, actionable performance reports and presenting findings to engineering, QA, and leadership teams.
• Providing recommendations for performance optimisation across backend services and APIs.
• Establishing best practices for performance testing, monitoring, and baseline creation.
• Collaborating with developers, architects, SRE/DevOps, and Product teams to diagnose issues and drive resolutions.
• Supporting performance testing as part of CI/CD workflows using GitHub.
• Mentoring junior performance engineers or QAs as needed.

What we want from you:

• Strong hands-on experience in performance testing of backend/API-driven systems.
• Solid experience using Locust (Python-based) for load generation (or ability to quickly ramp up if familiar with other tools).
• Strong Python skills for developing and improving performance scripts.
• Proven experience analysing performance results, identifying bottlenecks, and providing recommendations.
• Good understanding of distributed load generation, concurrency models, and test workload modelling.
• Experience integrating performance tests with GitHub (Git workflows, branching, PR reviews, CI/CD pipelines).
• Strong ability to work across teams and communicate complex performance findings in a clear, concise manner.
• Experience with performance monitoring tools (Grafana, APM tools, logs, metrics dashboards).
• Exposure to microservices, REST APIs, and backend system architecture.
• Experience working in Agile teams with fast-paced release cycles.
• Strong organisational skills and ownership mindset—able to manage deadlines and deliver high-quality output.

If you know some of this even better:

• Experience with other load generation tools such as JMeter, Gatling, k6, or LoadRunner.
• Experience profiling backend APIs, reviewing code/logs, or advising on optimisation opportunities.
• Experience working in cloud environments (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
• Understanding of CI/CD performance test automation and shift-left performance practices.
• Experience analysing API or service-level performance from production monitoring tools (APM, RUM, log analytics).
• Knowledge of performance engineering concepts such as capacity planning, load forecasting, and scalability analysis.
• Experience with performance testing of mobile/FE flows (desirable but not mandatory as our pack is backend-focused).
• Experience in front end page load analysis, profiling and optimisation using Webpagetest, Pagespeed Insights, Speedcurve, sitespeed.io or other tools.

What we can offer you:

Alongside the opportunity to work with some of the most exciting brands around the world, we’ll also prioritise your career development and help you grow your skills. We’ll empower you to make a difference, allow you to be yourself, and respect who you are.

Our personality and behaviours: We believe that we are what we do, not just what we say. Our shared values and behaviours show how to bring the VML Enterprise Solution's culture to life through the actions we all take every day:

• Connect Meaningfully
• Inspire Creatively
• Include Purposefully
• Approach Positively

Our brilliant, talented people are what makes VML Enterprise Solutions what we are. That’s why we look for people who go beyond and always push our thinking to be better than yesterday.

AT VML Enterprise Solutions

Our Enterprise Solutions division houses strategic consultants, creative and technical architects and skilled developers and operators that together help some of the world’s leading organisations to deliver outstanding digital experiences across all major routes to market worldwide: marketplaces, online retailers, D2C, B2B and social platforms. With over 4,200 experts in 55 operational centres across 34 countries, our capabilities span the entire buying journey from customer acquisition, through engagement, to conversion and loyalty, driving multi-channel growth for world-leading brands.

We work with some of the most exciting brands such as The Coca-Cola Company, EY, Bosch, Unilever, Ford, DFS, Mercedes-Benz, Johnson & Johnson, Nestlé, Sainsbury’s, Selfridges, Shell and Tiffany & Co. We’ve built over 500 platforms for brands and retailers and generate in excess of $29bn annually for our clients and work with over 50 strategic partners including Adobe, SAP, Salesforce, HCL, Shopify, Sitecore, BigCommerce, commerce tools and Acquia. Our reputation is based on our people, and we believe we have some of the best in the business.

As our business grows internationally, we’re looking for new people to join us on our journey to inspire and take a key role in shaping some of the best commerce solutions, services, and websites in the world. Working as a team, no problem is insurmountable; we share in our client’s successes and believe that anyone can show creative bravery no matter what their role is in the team.

WPP (VML Enterprise Solutions) is an equal opportunity employer and considers applicants for all positions without discrimination or regard to characteristics. We are committed to fostering a culture of respect in which everyone feels they belong and has the same opportunities to progress in their careers. 

VML is a WPP Agency. For more information, please visit our website, and follow VML on our social channels via Instagram, LinkedIn, and X. 

When you click "Submit Application", this will send any information you add below to VML. Before you do this, we think it's a good idea to read through our Recruitment Privacy Policy. California residents should read our California Recruitment Privacy Notice. This explains what we do with your personal data when you apply for a role with us, and, how you can update the information you have provided us with or how to remove it.