Edtech.com's Summary

Frontline Education is hiring a Performance Center of Excellence Lead. This role builds and leads the company's performance engineering practice, setting the standards, tooling, and testing methods that engineering teams use to confirm Frontline's software for K-12 school districts holds up under real-world load. The lead reports to the VP of Platform and Architecture, partners with the site reliability engineering (SRE), platform, and product engineering teams, and manages one performance QA practitioner while influencing teams it does not directly manage.

Highlights

Define and own Frontline's performance engineering charter, standards, maturity model, and enablement framework, including self-serve playbooks and tooling guidance that let teams run performance testing on their own.
Assess the performance maturity of product and platform teams and set up a repeatable way to evaluate performance risk before major releases, customer onboarding events, and infrastructure changes.
Select, standardize, and maintain the load, performance, and resilience testing toolchain, and build test methods around real customer traffic patterns such as concentrated egress from K-12 district networks.
Set performance benchmarks, service level objectives, and acceptance criteria, and keep a library of reusable test plans, scripts, and playbooks that teams can use without starting from scratch.
Build reusable agentic skills and agents that automate test plan generation, load-testing orchestration, and performance analysis so teams can do performance engineering with AI assistance.
Embed with engineering teams on high-risk work such as new customer onboarding and major architecture changes, and join incident retrospectives to turn performance findings into updated standards.
Partner with SRE and DevOps on observability architecture and load-testing infrastructure, and represent performance in architecture reviews, while reporting adoption progress to the VP of Platform and Architecture each quarter.
Bring 8+ years in performance engineering, load testing, or site reliability, including a record of building or scaling a performance practice in a SaaS or enterprise software environment.
Show hands-on expertise with load testing tools such as JMeter, Gatling, k6, or Locust, plus observability platforms and a solid grasp of distributed systems and cloud architecture on AWS, Azure, or GCP.
Influence without direct authority and explain technical findings as clear risk assessments to engineers and executives, with K-12 edtech or other seasonally spiky SaaS experience a plus.

Performance Center of Excellence Lead Full Description

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.

Compensation & Benefits

Bonus eligibility
401(k) with company match
Comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage
Employee stock purchase plan
Generous paid time off and tuition reimbursement

Inclusion, Belonging & Equal Opportunity

Frontline Education is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer. We aspire to have an inclusive workplace and strongly encourage suitably qualified applicants from a wide range of backgrounds to apply and join our team.

Interview Process & Data Privacy

As part of our interview process, Frontline uses video conferencing tools that include photo capture and may include automated transcription features. A screenshot or photo will be taken at the start of the interview for internal identification and record-keeping purposes only, and transcription may be used to support notetaking and evaluation consistency. These materials are used solely by our recruiting and hiring teams, stored securely, and not shared outside the hiring process. Candidates may opt out of the transcription at any time by notifying their recruiter in advance. Frontline processes this information in accordance with applicable data privacy laws and only for legitimate business purposes related to recruitment and hiring.

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