Performance Benchmark Architect (Associate Systems Engineer)

About SAS

SAS believes in the whole employee experience. Meaningful work. Empowerment to make a difference that changes people’s lives. Dynamic work environments that foster innovation. And an award-winning culture that makes it all possible. We believe great ideas can come from anywhere. Whether you're a university recruit, or an experienced professional ready for the next big challenge, SAS brings perks, passion, and the potential to grow. No limits.

About the Role:
As a valued member of Worldwide Marketing, the Performance Benchmark Architect will serve on the Enterprise Excellence Center’s – Benchmarking team. A core program established in 2004 for supporting sales and marketing enablement by providing comprehensive performance artifacts (briefs, whitepapers) and reference architectures for SAS solutions and other technologies. Individual contributions directly support sales/pre-sales enablement including; go-to-market strategies, field consultants and the SAS hardware sizing program. Tenacity, quick-learner and technical diversity is the key to success in the Enterprise Excellence Center. This position offers exciting opportunities to work on the latest SAS solutions, modern computing hardware and other 3rd party technologies.

As a SAS Performance Benchmark Architect you will be a part of a highly dynamic team that provides the sales force with knowledge and content about SAS’ ability to meet the customers’ performance, scalability, availability and other related needs. You will work independently as directed by management on a variety of performance benchmarks, best practices and/or reference architectures. As a benchmark expert, you will own the process from start to finish for assigned projects starting with use case definition through test execution, analysis and content creation (i.e. performance brief, best practice or reference architecture). Your work will directly influence product performance, customer hardware sizing recommendations, and customer architecture.

The majority of your time will be focused across the following three work streams: requirements gathering, hands-on technical preparation and execution and content creation / publication. Success will depend on technical skills, resourcefulness, communication skills and time management.

Primary responsibilities:

• Collaborative meetings throughout the duration of the project with peers and stakeholders for gathering key information required for building test suites, ensure buy-in with direction and results or discuss other relevant findings such as raised defects.
• Design, build, execute and analyze performance of test suites (use cases) which represent real-world customer scenarios. This may include data preparation, performance test script preparation and working with a variety of performance tools including but not limited to HPE’s Performance Center.
• Install and configure SAS or other 3rd party technologies as required to prepare the benchmark environment for assigned projects.
• Leverage knowledge from use case definition to develop a comprehensive set of deliverables including but not limited to test suite artifacts (data, scripts, timeline, etc.) and published content (performance briefs, best practices, etc.).
• Use knowledge discovered and resulting from the benchmarking project to author performance briefs, reference architecture documents, best practices and other forms of knowledge transfer as appropriate
• Support peers in benchmarking team by providing peer review, support in troubleshooting problems and achieving team goals.
• Take the initiative to learn new products and the necessary functionality, tuning and configuration to successfully execute benchmarks.

Essential:

• Bachelor's degree, preferably in Computer Science and/or related experience.
• Quick learner with a passion for leading challenging projects often times applying creativity to solve difficult problems.
• Ability to relate technical concepts and solutions to real-world problems translating knowledge into technical content.
• Self-motivated with ability to work independently and as part of a global team with minimal supervision

Preferred Skills:
Experience with one or more programming languages:

• Python
• Scala
• Load Runner
• Spark
• Java
• Selenium
• H2O
• SAS

Additional:

• Working knowledge of analytics and common algorithms (Decision Trees, Regressions, Neural Networks, etc..)
• System administration expertise on Linux and Windows operating systems
• Experience with server platforms and operating systems (Linux, Windows) from a performance aspect (diagnosing and tuning for performance)
• Familiarity of storage infrastructures (DASD, SAN, NFS, etc.) and associated protocols
• Strong problem solving, organizational, decision-making, written, oral and interpersonal skills.
• Knowledge of SAS technology, architecture and resources
• Strong problem solving, organizational, decision-making skills

Our Culture

SAS looks not only for the right skills, but also for a cultural fit. We seek colleagues who will contribute to the unique culture that makes SAS such a great place to work. We look for the total candidate: technical skills, culture fit, relationship skills, problem solvers, good communicators and, of course, innovators. Candidates must be ready to make an impact.

 Additional Information:

To qualify, applicants must be legally authorized to work in the United States, and should not require, now or in the future, sponsorship for employment visa status.

SAS is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status or any other characteristic protected by law.

The level of this position will be determined based on the applicant's education, skills and experience.

Resumes may be considered in the order they are received.

SAS employees performing certain job functions may require access to technology or software subject to export or import regulations. To comply with these regulations, SAS may obtain nationality or citizenship information from applicants for employment. SAS collects this information solely for trade law compliance purposes and does not use it to discriminate unfairly in the hiring process.