Performance & Non-Functional Testing Lead

Performance & Non-Functional Testing Lead

Location: Sheffield (Hybrid)

Contract: Inside IR35

Industry: Financial Services / Enterprise Technology Transformation

Mandator Skills: GCP, IAM

Role Overview

An exciting opportunity has arisen for an experienced Performance & Non-Functional Testing Lead to join a major enterprise transformation programme focused on modernising Identity & Access Management (IAM) platforms and cloud-native technology services.

This role will be responsible for defining and delivering the end-to-end Performance & Non-Functional Testing (NFT) strategy, ensuring large-scale systems are scalable, resilient, secure, and operationally ready. You will work closely with Architecture, Engineering, DevOps, Product, and Delivery teams to embed performance and resilience testing throughout the software delivery lifecycle.

Key Responsibilities

• Own and lead the programme-wide Performance & Non-Functional Testing capability.
• Define and maintain the NFT strategy, roadmap, standards, and governance framework.
• Establish testing approaches covering:
• Load Testing
• Stress Testing
• Volume Testing
• Soak/Endurance Testing
• High Availability Testing
• Failover & Disaster Recovery Testing
• Operational Acceptance Testing
• Compliance and Audit Validation
• Gather, define, and validate non-functional requirements across multiple workstreams.
• Lead tooling assessments, proof of concepts, and recommendations.
• Deliver performance testing for cloud-native and distributed applications.
• Analyse performance data, logs, system metrics, and profiling outputs to identify bottlenecks and recommend remediation actions.
• Develop performance dashboards, KPIs, and executive-level reporting.
• Integrate testing capabilities into CI/CD pipelines and DevOps processes.
• Mentor and guide performance engineers and testing teams.
• Provide clear risk assessments and release readiness recommendations to senior stakeholders.

Required Skills & Experience

• Extensive experience leading Performance & Non-Functional Testing within complex enterprise environments.
• Proven experience designing and implementing enterprise-wide NFT strategies.
• Strong experience delivering:
• Performance Testing
• Resilience Testing
• HA/DR Testing
• Failover Validation
• Capacity and Scalability Testing
• Expertise with industry-standard testing tools such as:
• JMeter
• Gatling
• LoadRunner
• NeoLoad
• Experience testing cloud-native platforms, ideally within GCP environments.
• Strong understanding of containerised and distributed systems including Kubernetes and Docker.
• Experience integrating testing into CI/CD and DevOps pipelines.
• Strong scripting and automation skills using Python, Java, Scala, or similar technologies.
• Experience reviewing complex architecture and integration designs.
• Strong stakeholder management, communication, and reporting experience.
• Previous experience leading and mentoring testing teams.

Desirable Experience

• Identity & Access Management (IAM) platform testing experience.
• Graph database (Neo4j) performance testing and optimisation.
• Experience with event-driven architectures and messaging technologies.
• Knowledge of GitOps practices.
• Experience with monitoring and observability tools such as AppDynamics, Datadog, or cloud-native monitoring platforms.
• Exposure to DevSecOps environments and SaaS platforms.
• Financial services or large-scale regulated industry experience.

If you are an experienced Performance & Non-Functional Testing Leader looking to shape testing strategy for a major enterprise transformation programme, we would like to hear from you.