Lead Performance Engineer

About the role

VML, part of WPP, is a leading creative company that combines brand experience, customer experience, and commerce, creating connected brands to drive growth. VML is celebrated for its innovative and human first, award-winning work for blue chip client partners including AstraZeneca, Colgate-Palmolive, Dell, Ford, Microsoft, Nestlé, The Coca-Cola Company, and Wendy's. The agency is recognized by the Forrester Wave™ Reports, as a Leader among Marketing Creative and Content Service Providers, Commerce Services, Global Digital Experience Services, Global Marketing Services and, most recently, Marketing Measurement & Optimization. In addition, VML's specialist health network, VML Health, is one of the world's largest and most awarded health agencies. VML's global network is powered by 26,000 talented people across 55+ markets, with principal offices in Kansas City, New York, Detroit, London, São Paulo, Shanghai, Singapore, and Sydney. About WPP WPP is the trusted growth partner for the world's leading brands. We unite cutting-edge media intelligence and data solutions, world-class creativity, next-generation production, transformative enterprise solutions and expert strategic counsel in a single company - powered by exceptional talent and our agentic marketing platform, WPP Open, to help our clients navigate change, capture opportunity and deliver transformational growth. For more information, visit WPP.com . We are seeking a dynamic and experienced Lead Performance Engineer to join our growing team in Portugal. This is a pivotal, permanent role that combines deep, hands-on technical expertise with strategic leadership, client engagement, and mentorship. Reporting to the Principal Performance Engineer, you will be a key figure responsible for safeguarding and enhancing the performance, scalability, and reliability of our clients' critical digital platforms. We are looking for a multi-faceted professional who brings a blend of deep technical knowledge, strong leadership qualities, and a strategic, consultative mindset. You have extensive, hands-on experience in performance engineering, with a demonstrable history of improving performance for complex, large-scale, highly transactional applications. You are someone who not only solves technical problems but also builds relationships, guides teams, and drives business value.

Responsibilities

• Leadership, Strategy & Client Engagement:
• Act as a performance engineering consultant for key clients, building strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders, providing expert guidance, and confidently leading technical discussions to non-technical audiences.
• Champion the value of performance engineering across the business, demonstrating its impact on user experience, conversion, and client ROI.
• Mentor and guide junior to mid-level engineers, fostering a culture of performance excellence and continuous learning.
• Contribute to and implement wider performance engineering strategies, evolving practices, and tooling (e.g., K6, Playwright, APM tools).
• Demonstrate strong AI literacy, with practical experience using generative AI (e.g., LLMs, code-gen tools) as a productivity multiplier for tasks such as script/data generation and analysis. Drive innovation in Performance Monitoring and Testing using AI.
• Collaborate with account and leadership teams to identify opportunities and contribute to commercial proposals.
• Hands-on & Release Activities:
• Lead performance testing efforts, including workload modeling, test execution, root cause analysis, and reporting.
• Develop and present clear, actionable reports on key performance metrics (including Core Web Vitals) to both technical and business stakeholders.
• Own the configuration and maintenance of APM and observability tools (e.g., New Relic, DataDog, Dynatrace), including designing meaningful dashboards and robust alerting strategies, as dedicated observability engineers are not always present.
• Act as the performance authority within development teams, providing expertise and oversight, particularly regarding the impact of changes on analytics and sales revenue.
• Drive the agenda for performance optimization, introducing new testing capabilities within allocated projects.
• What We Want from You:
• Technical Expertise:
• Programming: Strong proficiency in JavaScript/TypeScript is critical for new development in K6; additional languages (e.g., Python, Java) are a plus.
• Cloud Platform Experience: Demonstrable experience on major cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, GCP, Azure).
• Web Technologies: Solid experience with front-end performance analysis

Benefits

Your Match

How well this role fits your profile.

Company Intel

What employees say

Worked at wundermanthompson? Share your experience