Vacancies
Performance Engineer

Performance Engineer

Posted:

31 Mar 2025

Hybrid (London/Leicester)

Technology

Permanent

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Overview

This role can be based out of our London or Leicester offices. We operate a hybrid working policy.

About us

Home. There’s no place like it. And there’s no feeling like helping people create the joy of feeling truly at home.

At Dunelm, that’s what we do.

We’re the UK's number one choice for homewares because we make home life lovelier for our customers. And the caring and supportive culture we've created makes this a place you'll feel right at home too.

Quality Chapter

You might not think it, but remaining the first choice for savvy homeware-shoppers involves some pretty advanced tech. We’ve recently made our whole company serverless, making us the largest user of AWS Lambdas in Europe (second in the world), and we’re bringing more and more tech into our stores.

As a Quality Chapter at Dunelm, our aim is to enable and support our ability to deliver high quality value, in the right way, based on our customer needs. With a focus on having the right balance of speed and quality to frequently achieve this.

To be able succeed our Quality Chapter is made up of 60+ quality advocates (QAs), in various roles, embedded into our 20+ crews and across our 6 domains to enable & implement continuous quality & testing through whole team ownership.

Performance Engineering Team

Dunelm is committed to ensure the best customer and colleague experience. Hence performance of the real time systems like e-commerce websites and Point of Sale are critical. Being part of our performance engineering team, you will directly protect and improve customer and colleague experience by evolving validation and performance management in Technology function.

We are focused on our vision that is “To help improve customer and colleague experience by having optimum time critical operations and high confidence in system availability.” We thrive to achieve our mission that is “We innovate, support and enable the platform and the technology squads to deliver an efficient, scalable, total retail system “.

We are on a continuous journey of achieving good page experience signal (Google) and peak readiness (scalability) for critical tech.

If you’re excited about joining our growing Quality chapter, then please apply now for our immediate attention.

As a key individual contributor of the Performance Engineering team, you will work within the team and with the business-aligned crews where your primary focus will be to implement testing strategies, provide consultation & support to the development squads and collaborate to achieve peak readiness from scalability perspective. You will work with other performance engineers and development squads in required focus area collaboratively to deliver highly performant outcomes to our customers.

You will be focused on evolution and maintenance of our performance engineering lifecycle i.e. front-end/back-end performance audits and performance test automation in software delivery life cycle (SDLC). You will be hands on in the design, maintenance, adoption of the performance test frameworks and performance management techniques.

What You’ll Do

Benchmarking: Define the metrics for system’s scalability, implement performance observability, curate a process to validate and improve these metrics in SDLC through collaboration with other chapters and wider business.
Tooling & Automation: Design and implement robust testing frameworks focused on enabling test first practices and providing right feedback at right time. Maintain and evolve the in-house tooling for web application and API load testing that is fit for the whole Dunelm’s technology function.
Performance Optimisation: Conduct in-depth performance audits and identify bottlenecks in our back-end code, network and infrastructure.
Collaboration: Work closely with developers, site reliability/operation engineers and platform/infrastructure engineers to ensure that scalability is a priority throughout the development process.
Training & Mentorship: Provide guidance and mentorship on scalability management best practices and high-level optimisation techniques during pre-deployment and post-deployment stages.
Research and Innovations: Stay up to date with the latest trends and technologies in scalability management and explore new opportunities for improvement.
Outcome Support & Consultation: Provide consultation or support development/platform outcomes on scalability management and scalability validation tooling.

Essential Skills

Performance Testing Life Cycle: Deep understanding of Performance Testing Life Cycle and how performance can be embedded in Software Development Life Cycle.
Web Application Load Testing: Subject matter expert in front end automation techniques and how test scripts can be designed to simulate real life scenarios during peak period.
API Load Testing: Subject matter expert in API load testing techniques to develop highly scalable APIs while balancing with the cost of running them.
Testing Techniques: Expert in various load testing techniques and when to apply them based on the business need.
Cloud Technologies: Strong skills in AWS or GCP cloud technologies to build test solutions and to understand the performance trade-off with various options.
Continuous Delivery: Strong skills in CI/CD tools and understanding of continuous delivery to embed scalability management in the application pipelines.
Design And Architecture: Good understanding of interpreting design and architecture diagram to achieve optimal performance through this process.
Performance Optimisation Techniques: Good at root cause analysis and identifying opportunities to optimise the performance.

Desirable Skills

Retail Technology: Good understanding of retail technologies and the business processes in retail domains.
Observability: Experience in monitoring and code profiling tools.
AI Literacy: Understanding on how AI could be leveraged in performance engineering.
Programming Principles: Understanding of programming principles and best practice (e.g., DRY, SOLID for creating re-usable code, best practice etc).
Tools: K6 for Web API Load Testing, Artillery for Web Application Load Testing, Gitlab for CI/CD

Behaviours/Values

Our shared values of 'act like owners', 'keep listening and learning', 'long term thinking', and 'stronger together' help ensure we are always finding better ways of doing things and spending our time focusing on what’s important.

Leading Self:

As a Performance Engineer with us, you will be able to be your true self whilst seeking to build relationships and empathy with other members of your crew and chapter, to work as a team to take ownership of embedding quality into everything we deliver to our customer.

You will be empowered to take the lead on quality within your area of influence to coach and enable continuous improvements to quality and software engineering practices whilst maintaining long-term thinking to stay aligned to the future business and technology roadmap.

You will be given the freedom to be curious and ask questions to gather more understanding with a focus on the customer, whilst at the same time, be able to communicate clearly with others your own thoughts and ideas around quality and testing.

You will work within a psychologically safe environment to encourage you to innovate, think outside the box, adapt and experiment to try different things based on problems or challenges being presented.

Finally, you will be supported and presented with opportunities to develop yourself and your own growth mindset and desire to learn, will determine how far you choose to take those opportunities.

D&I statement

Dunelm is committed to becoming a fully inclusive business that is representative of our customers and locations. We recognise the value in diversity and welcome applications from all candidates regardless of sex, age, race, religion, ability, gender or sexual identity, socio-economic background or education. We are committed to making Dunelm a place where everyone can enjoy a successful career and have systems in place to support all our colleagues. We are seeking applications from candidates who share our values and celebrate diversity in all its forms.

Tech to the future

Meet John, our Chief Tech and Innovation Officer, who shares insights into the exciting things happening in tech, why Dunelm is his happy place, and his unique route into the tech world.

Work your way

We want our colleagues to feel at home wherever they work, so that they are comfortable and can be their best selves. In addition, we want everyone to feel connected to the business, our strategy and the teams they work with.

Where hybrid working is applicable, colleagues need to strike the right balance to fulfil both of these important factors. You will find the right mix of being at home, in the office & out in the business, bearing in mind business needs, job role and level of responsibility.

Wellbeing is more than just a buzzword here

From our Wellbeing Buddies and Mental Health First Aid training to our progressive parental leave, menopause policies and Colleague Support Fund, we're committed to supporting our colleagues in every area – and at every stage – of their lives. Through our partnership with the Retail Trust, everyone at Dunelm has free access to a 24/7 Virtual GP, as well as therapy and counselling, plus information, guidance and advice in all areas of financial, emotional and physical wellbeing.

Look in our toy box

Of course, you should never judge a business by its tech stack. But take a peek at the range of technologies our engineers and developers are currently playing with.

Keep on growing

Join us on the tech side and you'll have access to a huge array of learning and development opportunities, including a variety of internally created workshops and externally accredited courses. We also have a substantial tech-specific budget to fund e-Learning licenses, conference visits, resources, and qualifications, plus dedicated mentors, well-being buddies and a wide range of network groups to support you as you progress.

Housewarming & Settling In where you can find out more about the wider business, our culture, behaviours, networks and wellbeing support

Thrive, our learning and skills platform which gives you a blended, bite-sized, social learning experience with learning relevant to your role

Our Enterprise Leadership Programme designed specifically for our strong growth potential Heads of Department to help them reach the next level in their career

Our INSPIRE Programme designed for our strong growth potential senior managers across the business to enhance their leadership capability

Our EXPLORE Programme designed to prepare our next generation of Line Managers

Personal Effectiveness workshops and self-led learning, also delivered through Thrive

Apprenticeships opportunities relevant to your role – from level 2 (equivalent to GCSE) through to Level 7 (equivalent to Masters)

Colleague Development Fund to support colleagues in accessing external training relevant to your role

Coaching and mentoring opportunities to support you in your current role and help you prepare for the next

Self-awareness tools to help you understand what really matters to you, and where your own talents and ambitions lie

Progress conversations that reflect on how you're doing and define your focus areas for the coming months

Career conversations that explore what you want from your career, in light of your current capabilities, potential and future aspirations

Meet your team

Meet your team

I’m in my happy place when…

"I’ve come such a long way and learned so much since starting here, and it’s thanks to the team I have around me."

Clare, QA Engineer

Meet your team

I’m in my happy place when…

"There's a brilliant support network you can learn from here, and a great 'no fear of failure' culture."

Paulina, Principal Delivery Lead

Meet your team

I’m in my happy place when…

"Someone I knew said the people are great, and you get the chance to improve and innovate. That’s certainly been my experience."

Balaji, Platform Engineer

Meet your team

I’m in my happy place when…

"People here can challenge and push back. If you think there’s a better way of doing things, you can say so."

Bhavik, Principal Engineer

Madalyn, Senior Digital Trading Executive

Meet your team

I’m in my happy place when…

"We work in a really collaborative way and I love the buzz of the working environment."

Madalyn, Senior Digital Trading Executive

Meet your team

I’m in my happy place when…

"Recognition means a lot to me. I love that others see what my team and I are doing and value the positive impact we make."

Chloe, Senior SEO Manager

Meet your team

I’m in my happy place when…

"I'm in my happy place when I'm solving problems. So doing that for a living is just amazing!"

Asheeka, Head of Trading Analytics

Rewards you deserve

Along with competitive salaries, we offer a range of other great benefits to recognise the unique contribution you bring.

Salary Advance so you can access up to 50% of the money you've earned during the month, rather than having to wait until pay day

Instant discounts with a range of other companies to help you stretch your budget

Pension contributions to help you save for your retirement

ShareSave scheme that enables you to save monthly and buy Dunelm shares at a discounted rate, building up your investments for a rainy day

Continuous training and coaching to ensure you feel confident in your current role and ready for any new challenges

Access to wellbeing support as and when you need it, including an online GP for you and your immediate family

Colleague networks that give everyone a voice and create an environment where we all feel at home

Outstanding development opportunities and all the support you need to grow your career the way you want

33 days annual holiday plus your birthday off to celebrate, and another day when you move home, so you can get settled in

Generous discounts on all our own products, in-store and online to help you make your house a home

Cycle to work scheme to help you keep your fitness up and your travel costs down

Charity day off (paid, of course) so you can volunteer for a charity that matters to you

Free on-site parking (excluding London office) and good public transport links

How did we get here?

Today, Dunelm is a leader in the £11bn UK homewares market. With over 170 stores across the country and a successful online operation – dunelm.com – we offer over 60,000 products across a broad range of categories. But where did it all begin?

1979

Founder, Bill Adderley and his wife Jean take on a stall in Leicester Market selling curtains. Within a month, they make 600% profit.

1984

First bricks-and-mortar store founded in Churchgate, Leicester.

1988

With momentum growing, first flagship store opens in Leicester, East Street, offering warehouse facilities for expansion across the region.

1991

First superstore opens in Rotherham, offering premium brands such as Dorma, which the company goes on to acquire.

1996

Bill's son Will is appointed CEO of the company, following in his father's footsteps.

1999

Now a household name in the Midlands, Dunelm Mill opens a head office with warehouse facilities in Syston, Leicestershire.

2001

The acquisition of a small custom-made curtains business marks the start of Dunelm's made-to-measure service.

2002

A landmark year as Dunelm Mill opens its 50th store and a new central warehouse in Burton. The company goes on to open new stores at a rate of 10 each year.

2005

A fully shoppable website goes live, with a dedicated warehouse below our Radcliffe store

2006

Dunelm floated on the London Stock Exchange, marking the beginning of a new era for the company.

2010

In Liverpool, the company opens its 100th store, having celebrated its 30th birthday in 2009.

2011

To accommodate continued growth, Dunelm builds a new head office in Syston.

2013

Company rebrands from 'Dunelm Mill' to 'Dunelm' – reflecting what our customers have called us for years.

2016

Our family grew to include Worldstores.

2018

Nick Wilkinson joins the business as our new CEO.

2021

To accommodate our continued growth, Dunelm opens a fourth warehouse in Daventry.

2022

Launch of our ‘Conscious Choice’ collection – homeware that lasts longer and is made from more sustainable materials.

2022

Our third Delivering Joy Christmas campaign, with stores supporting over 700 local community causes and donating more than 61,000 gifts.

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