Senior Technical Specialist-Performance Developer

We are seeking a highly skilled and experienced Performance Engineer to lead performance-focused development initiatives across large-scale distributed systems. The ideal candidate will drive performance optimization, scalability, and reliability across complex architectures, influencing system design decisions.

NIFN2026

Performance Engineering & Optimization

• Identify, analyse, and resolve performance bottlenecks across application, middleware, and infrastructure layers.
• Conduct deep-dive analysis into CPU, memory, I/O, network, and latency issues.
• Drive performance tuning initiatives for high-throughput and low-latency systems.
• Establish performance benchmarks and define SLAs/SLOs for critical services.

Debugging & Troubleshooting at Scale

• Lead root cause analysis for production performance issues and outages.
• Debug complex issues in distributed environments involving multiple services and dependencies.
• Analyse thread dumps, heap dumps, GC logs, and profiling data to diagnose issues.
• Work closely with DevOps and Arch teams for arriving at Scalable Solutions/Fix.

System Design & Architecture

• Provide design recommendations with a strong focus on Performance, Scalability and Resilience.
• Evaluate trade-offs in distributed system design (e.g., consistency vs availability, throughput vs latency).
• Influence architecture decisions for microservices, event-driven systems, and data pipelines.
• Ensure systems are designed to handle large-scale workloads efficiently.

Benchmarking & Capacity Planning

• Design and execute performance tests (load, stress, endurance, spike testing).
• Build benchmarking frameworks for new and existing features.
• Perform capacity planning and forecasting for infrastructure and application growth.
• Validate system behaviour under peak and failure scenarios.

Feature Development at Scale

• Contribute to development of new features with performance considerations from design to implementation.
• Ensure efficient resource utilization and minimal performance overhead.
• Optimize APIs, data models, and processing pipelines for scale.

Required Skills & Qualifications

• Graduate or Postgraduate in Engineering with 8 to 14 years of strong experience in Java performance tuning and JVM internals.
• Solid understanding of distributed systems and microservices architecture. Hands-on experience with containerized environments (Kubernetes).
• Deep knowledge of messaging systems (Kafka) and data stores.
• Experience in performance testing, benchmarking, and capacity planning.
• Strong debugging and analytical skills in complex production environments.
• Proven ability to lead teams and drive technical initiatives.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with large-scale telecom or network management systems.
• Exposure to real-time data processing and observability platforms.
• Familiarity with cloud-native architectures and CI/CD pipelines.
• Knowledge of system-level tuning (Linux kernel, networking, Muti Threading etc).

Core Technologies

• Languages: Java (primary), Bash, Python (supporting)
• Frameworks & Platforms: Karaf (OSGi-based runtime)
• Kubernetes, Helm
• Apache Kafka (event streaming)
• OpenSearch/Elasticsearch (search & analytics)
• OpenTSDB (time-series data)
• Valkey /Redis (in-memory data store)
• MariaDB (relational database)
• Keycloak (Single-SignOn/authentication and identity systems)

Performance Analysis & Debugging Tools (JVM & Application Profiling)

• jstack (thread dump analysis)
• jmap (heap dump and memory analysis)
• MAT (Memory Analyzer Tool)
• VisualVM
• Java Flight Recorder (JFR)
• Kubernetes Tools: kubectl, metrics-server, Prometheus, Grafana
• Async Profiler (CPU & allocation profiling)
• YourKit / JProfiler (advanced profiling)
• GC Logs Analyzer tools (GCViewer, GCeasy)
• Linux Tools: top, htop, vmstat, iostat, netstat, sar
• Network Debugging: tcpdump, Wireshark
• Load Testing Tools: JMeter
• Logging & Observability: OpenSearch, Kibana

Key Competencies

• Problem-solving and analytical thinking
• Quantitative Thinking - What you can't measure you can't improve.
• Leadership and mentoring
• Performance-first mindset
• Strong communication and collaboration
• Ownership and accountability

Some of our benefits:

• Flexible and hybrid working schemes
• A minimum of 90 days of Maternity and Paternity Leave, with the option to return to work within a year following the birth or adoption of a child (based on eligibility)
• Life insurance to all employees to provide peace of mind and financial security
• Well-being programs to support your mental and physical health
• Opportunities to join and receive support from Nokia Employee Resource Groups (NERGs)
• Employee Growth Solutions to support your personalized career & skills development
• Diverse pool of Coaches & Mentors to whom you have easy access
• A learning environment which promotes personal growth and professional development - for your role and beyond

Learn about additional benefits in specific countries.