Testers do the bulk of the “grunt” work needed to move your application towards better performance. They provide accurate measurements in a timely manner. The accuracy and relevancy of their tests helps drive Management, Developers and Production towards measurement-driven thinking. Engineering rather than guesswork. When the role of the tester is misunderstood then the sloppily executed, poorly reported, or untimely, slow to emerge test data is often thrown out and disregarded by the very groups it is intended to help.

Important qualities, therefore, for load and performance testers include:

  • a dedication to accuracy and precision
  • a sense that they are communicating to the entire organization, not only merely verifying their tests.
  • flexibility to work overtime if needed.
  • system level thinking, an understanding that a bottleneck could be anywhere, SQL, Network, Web code, etc.
  • project management skills to work through company blockages to getting the data.
  • ability to work as a team member, both on the L&P team and within other devs, PMs and managers
  • Works under the direction and with a Performance Developer or feature developer.
  • Writes technical performance test plans
  • Develops data driven test automation scripts and executes performance and load testing of client products
  • Uses Load Runner (or Visual Studio Team System or Badboy) to design and execute load and performance tests against Web applications, web services and SQL Server.
  • Designs and executes daily load BVTs as well as larger, system level tests
  • Analyzes the data gathered from performance tests with an eye towards application performance, availability and capacity with the goals of ensuring the optimal user experience and reducing hardware costs.
  • Reports findings according to a defined process, such as sending an email.
  • In his spare time, works on automating the load testing.

Skills Required to Fulfill the Above Job

  • The ability to think beyond just what is on the monitor to the servers and architecture of the entire system.
  • Ability to use load tools to monitor, gather, and report application performance on Windows machines or  a Linux machine.
  • awareness of industry of performance standards (i.e., web pages shouldn’t take 3 minutes to load) and to compare the application under test to these standards and thereby determine if something is a bug.
  • knowledge of performance bottlenecks and end-to-end performance web performance measures (server response time, throughput, network latency, etc.)
  • ability to code basic load test scripts
  • Has an understanding of the load test environment, and the application architecture 
  • Interest in looking beneath the surface to identify root causes. (there is no red flag that pops us and says “failure” in load testing.)
  • Ability to recognizes when an issue needs to be escalated to a higher level
  • Willingness to work a flexible schedule in order to gather the data from long running tests and have them ready the next day for review by Dev and test leads.
  • Ability to write clear, audience aware and business-like e-mails, status reports and summaries
  • an understanding of web protocols including HTTP, HTTPS, TCP/IP, and DNS
  • an understanding of networking and web technologies such as HTML, JavaScript, jsp, asp, Flash, etc.
  • Knowledge of web page composition (static vs. dynamic elements, browser behavior, etc.)
  • some past experience in performance testing using tools
  • Programming Experience in the language the web site is coded in . C#, ASP.Net
  • Service oriented mentality. Recognizes that he is there to provide a service an value to the company, not to hold up the deployment of the application. And looks for ways to improve that service.
  • Keen attention to details.
  • Ability to troubleshoot issues in the load and performance test environment
  • Highly organized with ability to handle multiple tasks
  • Ability to work independently as well as collaboratively customers
  • Ability to learn new tools & technologies quickly
  • Some experience in collecting data, performing analysis on that data, and preparing reports
  • 2-3 years previous experience developing and/or testing
  • The ideal candidate is a thinker who is passionate about the ways that the Web will continue to revolutionize information distribution, interaction and business processes.
  • It is the tester’s job to produce a chart or a graph that is distributed to the team daily. He reports on the response time of the features currently being tested.

Load and Performance Tester - Job Description

Who is the Load and Performance Tester?

The Load and Performance Tester