Performance testing and engineering is always a niche area with many challenging objectives across the globe. The challenge of performance testing with performance engineering is far more complex and requires one to be multi-skilled to find problems/issues/defects. In the last few years, I have come across several interviews, discussions with client-facing groups and customers, and what they have in common is a high demand for performance engineers, not just performance testers.
Having knowledge and experience on any performance testing tools like Microfocus LoadRunner, Apache JMeter, Neotys Neoload or IBM RPT is good, but they are not really sufficient to find the hard and hidden bottlenecks. The ability to find degradations and root cause analysis in performance testing projects is really a challenge for any performance guru. So, what makes a performance tester a performance engineer? We all know that anything is possible in the IT industry and that skills can be acquired if one has a positive attitude and the only prerequisite to learning is spending time. So, based on my experience and understanding of this area, I have tried to lay down the general guidelines which I believe will help make any performance tester become a Perfect Performance Engineer. This article can help many performance engineers understand how to start a career from performance testing to performance engineering and the essential skills that every performance engineer should have.
