Backend Performance Engineer - Remote Opportunity

About the Role

We are seeking a talented Backend Performance Engineer to join Automattic's PerfOps team. As a Backend Performance Engineer remote, you will play a crucial role in optimizing our products, including WordPress.com, WooCommerce, and more, which serve tens of billions of page views each month. Your expertise will help us ensure that our backend systems are as fast and efficient as possible.

What You'll Do

• Identify and eliminate backend performance bottlenecks by profiling PHP applications and analyzing MySQL/MariaDB query performance.
• Optimize Memcached usage across Automattic’s products to enhance performance.
• Develop dashboards and instrumentation for performance observability, ensuring regressions are detected before reaching production.
• Collaborate with product and platform engineers to review code and architecture through a performance lens.
• Document best practices and contribute to internal guidelines for PHP and database performance.
• Mentor teams on writing scalable backend code and proactively search for performance issues.
• Work alongside support staff and engineers to address customer performance issues on individual sites.

Requirements

• Deep hands-on experience with PHP performance, including profiling applications and identifying hot paths.
• Strong understanding of caching layers and strategies, particularly with Memcached.
• Experience in performance work at scale, serving millions of requests.
• Ability to instrument, measure, and prove performance improvements using profiling tools and APM systems.
• Excellent written communication skills to explain complex findings clearly.
• Self-direction and ownership in prioritizing and driving high-impact performance work to completion.

Nice to Have

• Hands-on experience with WordPress and WooCommerce in high-traffic production environments.

What We Offer

• A competitive salary range of $70,000-$170,000 USD, paid in local currency.
• A fully remote work environment with an open vacation policy.
• Opportunities for professional growth and development.
• A collaborative and innovative team culture.
• Flexible working hours to accommodate your schedule.