Performance Center of Excellence Lead

Performance Center of Excellence Lead

Location: Remote or Hybrid to Wayne, PA  

Job Description:

Performance Center of Excellence Lead  

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.  

 

Why Frontline Education  

 

Frontline Education is a pioneer of school administration software purpose-built for K-12 districts.  

We provide innovative, connected solutions for student and special programs, business operations,  

and human capital management with powerful data and analytics to empower educators and  

administrators. We earn the trust of K-12 leaders across the U.S. by serving as a consistently high-  

performing, forthright partner of school districts through every dimension of the company.  

At Frontline, we value diversity, equity, and inclusivity, and are committed to building a workplace  

that respects, supports, and values the identities of all our employees. We offer a competitive  

compensation package, including a base salary, a rewarding bonus structure, 401k match, unlimited  

PTO, and opportunities for career advancement.  

 

Apply Today  

If you're a performance engineering leader who thrives on building practices that scale beyond  

your own headcount and want your work to directly protect the reliability of software used by  

teachers and administrators nationwide, we encourage you to apply for the Performance Center of  

Excellence Lead position at Frontline Education.  

 

Our Mission, Our People, Our Purpose  

 

At Frontline Education, we’re reimagining what’s possible by becoming an AI-first  

organization, transforming how we think, work, and serve the educators who shape our  

schools every day. By using AI in thoughtful, practical ways, we’re creating tools that help  

educators save time, gain insights, and focus more on what matters most, their students.  

As part of our team, you’ll be expected and empowered to build and apply AI skillsets that  

grow with you, because at Frontline Education, technology amplifies what matters most:  

the human drive to learn, improve, and make a difference.  

 

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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