Lead Performance Tester

AboutScrumconnect Consulting

Scrumconnect Consulting is a multi-award-winning UK public sector digital consultancy, positively influencing the lives of over forty million UK citizens. We bring deep expertise in agile delivery, digital transformation, and platform engineering across central government. With a team of over one hundred and twenty-five professionals - more than forty percent of whom are women - we are committed to building inclusive, diverse teams that reflect the communities we serve.

The Role

We're looking for a Lead Performance Tester to work across our UK government clients, owning performance assurance for complex, high-volume digital services.

You'll act as the performance authority across several business areas. You'll lead a team of senior performance engineers to deliver an exceptional service, plan how incoming work is sized and staffed, and give the formal recommendation on whether a service is ready for release to production.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the performance testing strategy for your business areas, including volumetric analysis, performance risk assessment and test scoping.
• Define non-functional requirements, entry and exit criteria and success measures, and sign off Test Completion Reports and production readiness recommendations.
• Provide performance engineering expertise, including architectural and design input, and lead root cause analysis of systemic performance issues.
• Lead load, stress, soak, scalability and resilience testing, and build performance testing into CI/CD pipelines.
• Engage senior stakeholders, delivery managers and architects, turning performance risk into terms they can act on and holding your position under challenge.
• Lead a team of senior and mid-level performance engineers, setting the standard their work is held to and reviewing what they produce.
• Line manage your engineers, including one-to-ones, objectives, feedback and progression, and act as the senior escalation point for performance issues.
• Own workload planning for incoming requests: assess and scope the work, and produce effort and cost estimates by role and month to a defined turnaround.
• Allocate staff to projects, balancing the skills needed, existing workload and development opportunities, and re-plan when priorities move.
• Work in blended, multi-supplier teams, representing performance in client governance, assurance forums and service assessments, and supporting OAT and live readiness.
• Improve how we assure performance by introducing tooling, automation and AI-assisted analysis where it makes testing faster or findings sharper, and turn what works into practice standards other teams reuse.

What We're Looking For

Essential:

• Eligible for UK security clearance (SC).
• Extensive experience leading performance testing for large-scale, high-volume systems.
• A strong performance engineering background, not tool execution alone, with proven ability to make design and architectural recommendations.
• Experience leading and line managing experienced engineers, including setting standards, reviewing work and developing people.
• Demonstrable experience of workload planning and allocating staff across several concurrent projects.
• Comfortable holding several engagements at once, at different stages and across different business areas.
• Experience with cloud platforms, particularly AWS, and a deep understanding of distributed systems, microservice architecture, scalability, resilience and capacity planning.
• Hands-on depth in at least one enterprise load testing tool, plus working knowledge of APM and observability tooling.
• Experience delivering in governed or regulated environments, working inside a client's own assurance process.
• Confident engaging stakeholders at technical and senior leadership level, able to explain performance risk to any audience and hold a position under challenge.

Desirable:

• Public sector or central government programme experience.
• Familiarity with the GDS Service Manual, service assessments or equivalent assurance frameworks.
• Experience of performance assurance for predictable peak events, such as a statutory deadline or seasonal surge.
• Experience of AI-assisted analysis applied to performance or observability data.
• Experience contributing to bids and framework responses.

Why Join Scrumconnect Ltd?

At Scrumconnect, we are more than just a consultancy. We are a collaborative team focused on delivering impactful digital transformation services across government and enterprise organisations.

As part of our team, you will benefit from:

• Exposure to major public sector digital transformation programmes.
• A collaborative and inclusive working culture.
• Opportunities for learning, development and certification.
• Hands-on experience working within agile delivery environments.

Application Process

• Submit your CV to [email protected]
• If shortlisted, you will be invited to attend two interview stages.

Scrumconnect Ltd is committed to creating an inclusive workplace and welcomes applications from individuals of all backgrounds and experiences.

Diversity and Inclusion

At Scrumconnect Consulting, we believe that diversity drives innovation. We are committed to creating an inclusive environment where every individual is respected, valued, and supported. We welcome applications from candidates of all backgrounds and experiences, and we actively encourage applications from women, people with disabilities, underrepresented communities, and those seeking flexible working arrangements.