Web Site Performance Engineer

This Web Performance Engineer is a senior-level position tasked with optimizing the speed of Gannett Co, Inc. Newspaper and Television Station web sites.  GMTI, a division of Gannett Co., Inc. provides application development, management and hosting services across multiple data centers for hundreds of newspaper and television web sites including USATODAY.COM.

 

The position is unique in that it requires a generalist with substantial expertise in both web hosting operations and web site design/development (from a performance optimization perspective).  It presents a great opportunity for an individual with a broad range of technical skills that can take a holistic view of complex systems and enjoys working across all areas of the company.  The Web Performance Engineer reports to the Director of Infrastructure Services.

 

Responsibilities

 

·         Be the go-to person and subject matter expert on web site performance, optimizing page load times and ensuring web site availability.  Scope includes internal and third-party hosted site components.

·         Using industry standard tools and other means to proactively monitor and report on web site page load times and availability.  Respond to incidents but more importantly prevent incidents through proactive monitoring and analysis.

·         Perform necessary analysis and troubleshooting of web hosting operation areas (network, hosts, operating systems, web server software, databases, load balancing, storage and security) in order to optimize web site page load times.  Gather and analyze data to root out errors, discern trends and diagnose complex customer-facing issues.

·         Analyze existing and new standard web site design.  With development team, optimize DOM, CSS, JavaScript and other areas for speediest real and perceived page delivery to end users.

·         Develop and implement internal (SQUID) and third-party (Akamai) caching strategies to speed up performance.

·         Evaluate, recommend, deploy and leverage industry standard tools and services (such as Keynote, GOMEZ, Coradiant, Tealeaf, etc…) to aide in tracking performance of the service and the actual end user experience.

·         As needed, participate in application load and performance testing to determine the impact of software changes before production release.

·         Assemble performance optimization statistical reports, user experience reports and other presentations as required.  Provide briefings to the senior management team and others.

·         Lead the effort to recommend performance optimization standards and guidelines across all functional areas for multi-tier web applications, web site design, databases.

 

Required Experience/Skills

 

·         Proven track record and experience with web hosting operations, web site performance tuning, measurement tools and methods for ensuring optimal performance and availability.  Minimum of 8+ years of professional related experience.

·         Best practices for web site page load performance development and design experience.  Perceived versus real page load times.  Experience working with industry standard tools/languages such as: Java/JavaScript, Perl, HTML, CSS, HTML, DOM, .NET and SQL Server.

·         Ability to independently troubleshoot complex performance problems involving infrastructure, applications, caching, ISPs and third-party content providers.

·         Ability to troubleshoot, from a problem solving/performance standpoint industry standard platforms, protocols and services: TCP/IP, UDP, DNS, HTTP, SSL, Linux, MS Windows, SQL Server, caching networks and IP networks.  Experience with industry standard site performance services such as Keynote, GOMEZ, SQUID and Akamai.

·         Exceptional interpersonal skills, communication skills, initiative and integrity.  Comfort level presenting and interacting with executive management team.

·          Minimum of a B.S. in Computer Science or related field.