Staff Software Engineer – Performance &… at CyberArk… · Santa…

companyDescription About CyberArk CyberArk, a Palo Alto Networks company, is the global leader in identity security, trusted by organizations around the world to secure human and machine identities in the modern enterprise. CyberArk’s AI-powered Identity Security Platform applies intelligent privilege controls to every identity with continuous threat prevention, detection and response across the identity lifecycle. With Identity Security, organizations can reduce operational and security risks by enabling zero trust and least privilege with complete visibility, empowering all users and identities, including workforce, IT, developers and machines, to securely access any resource, located anywhere, from everywhere. Learn more at cyberark.com. Copyright © 2026 CyberArk Software. All Rights Reserved. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders. jobDescription CyberArk is seeking a Staff-level SDET / Performance & Reliability Engineer to define and drive performance engineering as a core discipline across our cloud-native platform. This role goes beyond implementing tests — you will own the strategy, architecture, and adoption of performance and reliability practices across multiple teams. You will build systems, frameworks, and standards that enable engineers to understand and improve system behavior at scale. You will operate at the intersection of quality, production engineering, and distributed systems, partnering closely with development teams, Test Enablement, and Production Engineering to ensure our platform is scalable, observable, and production-ready. Performance requirements are often implicit — you will help define what should be tested, how to measure it, and how to operationalize it across teams. What You’ll Do Define and drive performance testing strategy across services and teams, establishing standards for scalability and reliability Design and build performance testing frameworks and infrastructure for distributed, cloud-native systems Lead the development of reusable tooling for load generation, traffic modeling, result analysis, and regression detection Establish performance baselines, SLIs/SLOs, and measurable success criteria across services Partner with engineering teams to embed performance testing into development workflows and CI/CD pipelines Analyze system behavior under load and identify bottlenecks across application, infrastructure, and data layers Use observability tools to interpret latency distributions, throughput, and failure patterns, and translate findings into actionable improvements Drive adoption of performance practices across teams, acting as a technical leader and subject matter expert Influence system design by advocating for scalability, resilience, and production readiness early in the development lifecycle Mentor engineers and SDETs on performance engineering principles and best practices #LI-KR1 #LI-Hybrid qualifications 8+ years of experience in SDET, performance engineering, backend engineering, or related roles Strong coding skills in Go, Java, or Python, with experience building test frameworks or system-level tooling Proven experience designing performance testing systems, not just executing tests Deep understanding of: performance testing methodologies (load, stress, soak, spike, etc.) workload modeling and traffic patterns latency (p50/p90/p99), throughput, and system behavior under load Experience working with distributed systems and cloud-native architectures Strong experience with observability platforms (Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, etc.) Experience integrating performance testing into CI/CD pipelines at scale Solid understanding of Linux systems and networking fundamentals (TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP/S) Nice to Have Experience building or extending custom load testing frameworks (k6, Locust, Gatling, etc.) Experience with containerized environments and orchestration (Kubernetes) Familiarity with cloud infrastructure behavior under load (autoscaling, load balancing, storage systems) Experience in security-sensitive or SaaS platforms Exposure to PKI, certificate management, or identity systems Experience with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Ansible) additionalInformation CyberArk is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or protected Veteran status. The salary range for this position is $181,000 – $225,000/year, plus bonus, which will be based on the employee’s performance and equity. Base pay may also vary considerably depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. The compensation package includes a wide range of medical, dental, vision, financial, and other benefits.