Principal Performance Engineer

Ready to shape the future of data?

Matillion is the intelligent data integration platform.

We're changing how the world works with data – and we need driven, curious people who think big and move fast.

We built the Data Productivity Cloud to supercharge data productivity, and now we’re shaping the future of data engineering with Maia – our AI‑powered virtual data engineers that help teams design, build, and manage data pipelines at unmatched speed.

Join #Team Green, where the mission comes first, collaboration drives us forward, and everyone pulls in the same direction to make a dent in the universe bigger than ourselves.

This is the definitive performance ownership role for the Matillion Data Productivity Cloud, where you will act as the technical expert who sees the entire system end‑to‑end. Your mission is to define, drive, and deliver the performance strategy across the platform’s control plane, data plane, agents, workflow engines, APIs, and UI to ensure it is fast, predictable, and resilient at massive scale.

You will thrive in a large‑scale, multi‑region environment with a hybrid SaaS model, cutting through complexity to build a clear performance narrative that drives tangible engineering outcomes. This critical leadership role directly shapes both the customer experience and the company’s bottom line by ensuring the platform remains efficient and stable as we continue our aggressive growth trajectory.

• Define and drive the Performance Vision and Strategy, establishing clear, measurable targets for latency, throughput, cost efficiency, and workload scalability across the Data Productivity Cloud.
• Conduct deep‑dive profiling and complex root‑cause analysis across distributed systems, investigating API latency, memory/CPU pressure, queue back‑pressure, and network bottlenecks.
• Build, maintain, and own repeatable, scalable benchmarking frameworks covering agent performance, concurrency, workflow orchestration throughput, and end‑to‑end user journeys.
• Drive significant Cost Performance and Efficiency improvements by utilizing telemetry and empirical data to reduce runtime operational costs (compute, memory, storage, network).
• Act as the technical performance expert to influence feature design, technical architecture, and implementation patterns across engineering teams to prevent regressions and embed performance guardrails.

• Proven experience as a Principal Engineer specializing in performance for large distributed systems, ideally within a high‑growth SaaS or data platform environment.
• Deep expertise in Java and Spring Boot, with strong JVM performance engineering skills, including GC tuning, heap/thread optimization, and low‑latency design.
• Strong systems‑level understanding of technologies like Kubernetes, container runtimes, Python performance, network behavior, and cloud architecture (AWS).
• The ability to influence engineers across teams without direct authority, shaping architecture, patterns, threading models, and concurrency to eliminate bottlenecks.
• Expertise with modern observability stacks (e.g., OTel, Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog) and hands‑on experience designing and running meaningful load, chaos, and stress scenarios.

At Matillion, we’re here to do something hard - change the way the world works with data, and build a great company along the way. Big, bold goals aren’t for the faint‑hearted, and we don’t shy away from them. But we don’t do it alone. No egos, no politics - just great people working together, guided by our six core values;
Confidence without arrogance, Working with integrity, Customer obsessed, Innovate and demand quality, Bias for action, We care.

We operate a flexible working culture that promotes work‑life balance, with benefits including:

- Company Equity

- 27 days paid time off

- 12 days of Company Holiday

- 5 days paid volunteering leave

- Group Mediclaim (GMC)

- Enhanced parental leave policies

- Mac Book Pro

- Access to various tools to aid your career development

Thousands of enterprises including Cisco, London Stock Exchange Group, EDF and Slack trust Matillion for a wide range of use cases from…