Software Sr Engineering Manager

About Avaya

Avaya is an enterprise software leader that helps the world’s largest organizations and government agencies forge unbreakable connections.

The Avaya Infinity™ platform unifies fragmented customer experiences, connecting the channels, insights, technologies, and workflows that together create enduring customer and employee relationships.

We believe success is built through strong connections – with each other, with our work, and with our mission. At Avaya, you'll find a community that values your contributions and supports your growth every step of the way.

Learn more at https://www.avaya.com

Job Information

Job Code: 00194001

Job Family: Research and Development

Job Function: Software Engineering

About the Job

We are seeking a Performance Architect – QA to join our R&D team as a senior individual contributor. The ideal candidate is a hands-on performance engineering expert with a deep architectural pedigree in core products, platforms, or large-scale enterprise software. You will shape our overarching performance strategy and partner closely with Product Engineering, Architecture, SRE, DevOps, and R&D teams to deliver highly scalable, resilient, and low-latency products. 
In this role, you will own the performance engineering domain from an architectural perspective—driving strategies that build performance into the core system design. While performance remains your primary focus, you will also bring critical insights into end-to-end, system-level Quality Assurance. By bridging the gap between functional automation and non-functional engineering, you will ensure a holistic approach to system reliability, helping elevate our entire QA framework. This role involves technical ownership and cross-functional influence, with no people-management responsibilities. 

About You

• Experience: 15+ years in QA, software/performance engineering, and automation, with 10+ years of hands-on SaaS experience. Mandatory background in a Core Product or R&D organization.

• Architecture & Systems: Expertise in distributed systems, microservices, cloud-native patterns, multi-tenant platforms, and load balancing (e.g., Istio service mesh).

• Performance & Reliability: Experience establishing data-driven SLOs/SLIs and error budgets. Proven ability to lead chaos engineering initiatives (fault injection, failovers) and capacity planning using real-time SRE/APM telemetry.

• Testing & Tooling: Expert in performance testing frameworks (K6, JMeter, Gatling, or custom simulators) and stateful/protocol-level fuzzing (HTTP/2, gRPC, WebSocket). Advanced proficiency in functional automation (Playwright, Cypress, Selenium).

• Cloud & Infrastructure: Hands-on with Docker, Terraform, and Kubernetes (AKS preferred) for autoscaling and high availability.

• Development & CI/CD: Strong programming skills in Java, Python, C#, or Go. Seamless integration of continuous verification into CI/CD pipelines.

• Observability: Mastery of APM tools, distributed tracing, database tuning, Prometheus, and Grafana.

• Education: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field.

Why Join & Who Should Apply
This is a high-impact role focused heavily on technical depth, engineering judgment, and cross-functional mentorship. You are a strong fit if you:

• Have scaled complex, distributed products in an R&D environment and deeply understand the entire product lifecycle.

• Can authoritatively influence architectural decisions using data-driven performance insights.

• Possess a big-picture vision for end-to-end QA, optimizing both functional boundaries and non-functional baselines.

• Can perfectly balance hands-on coding, debugging, and production analysis with strategic architecture ownership.

Education

Preferred Certifications

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Applicants must be currently authorized to work in the United States without the need for visa sponsorship now or in the future.

Avaya is an Equal Opportunity employer and a U.S. Federal Contractor. Our commitment to equality is a core value of Avaya. All qualified applicants and employees receive equal treatment without consideration for race, religion, sex, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, status as a protected veteran or any other protected characteristic. In general, positions at Avaya require the ability to communicate and use office technology effectively. Physical requirements may vary by assigned work location. This job brief/description is subject to change. Nothing in this job description restricts Avaya right to alter the duties and responsibilities of this position at any time for any reason.