Performance Analysis and Capacity Planning Jobs

Contents

1  eBay.com

Primary Job Responsibilities

Reporting to the Manager of Performance and Capacity Planning, this individual will serve as a primary resource for monitoring, tuning, analysis, reporting, capacity planning and consulting on performance related issues of site production Oracle systems running on Solaris. This position is part of a team based in San Jose, CA that provides performance monitoring and capacity planning services in the Site Operations production environment. A variety of performance monitoring tools on Oracle Statspack and Unix platforms will be used to model and analyze system performance and resource usage data to: highlight existing/pending/future system bottlenecks and make appropriate recommendations for optimal tuning.

Job Requirements

The successful candidate will have strong communication skills in both written and oral format, and will be capable of explaining complex technical issues to both technical and non-technical audiences. Ability to interface with all levels of management, negotiating and influencing, to build consensus is required. The candidate should be able to take initiative, obtain required resources and cooperation of needed participants will also be necessary. Occasionally this individual will be responsible for the implementation of various programs and projects. These projects will vary in scope but will be focused around enhancements and changes to data collection, archiving, reporting and analysis.

The candidate needs to have a solid knowledge with Oracle internals such as latching, locking, Oracle IO, data block fundementals and index structure plus a good understanding of Solaris internals in terms of file system, process, memory, IO subsystem and CPU management.

The individual also needs to demonstate the ability to estimate, measure and quantify database impacts with new projects, indentify and alert inefficient SQL/design flaws, forecast mid to long term system capacity growth need and contribute to overall site availability and scalability design and improvement plans.

Basic Qualifications

• Minimum 5 years of hands on Oracle database administration experience in a production environment.
  
  
• Unix server performance analysis and systems administration experience.
  
  
• Strong analytical and technical communication skills a must.
  
  
• SAS Programming and reporting experience a plus.
  
  
• Knowledge of queuing theory a plus
  
  
• Familiarity with HyPerformix Optimizer, Capacity Manager or Workbench a plus.
  
  
• Proficiency with Unix based tools for file and data management including sh, ksh and perl.
  
  

Demonstrated ability to:

• Analyze Statspack data to identify database bottlenecks.
  
  
• Explain complex Oracle internals to developers in easy to understand expressions.
  
  
• Identify system level issues based on variety of OS data.
  
  
• Maintain and report from large volumes of data
  
  
• Develop creative and efficient reporting techniques
  
  
• Analyze problems and think creatively to develop alternative solutions
  
  
• Evaluate cost/risk factors to make recommendations
  
  
• Communicate clearly and effectively in both written and oral form
  
  
• Organize and manage multiple concurrent tasks/duties
  
  
• Manage priorities to meet deadlines in a high-energy production environment
  
  
• Understand and react to the politics inherent in organization structures
  
  
• Exercise independent judgment in methods, techniques and evaluation criteria for obtaining results
  
  

Education:

BS in Computer Science or related subjects.

2  Gap Inc.

3  PerotSystems - Plano, TX

4  Kaiser Permanente - Pleasanton, CA

Background:

With the name, Enterprise Engineering, you can assume that our focus is huge, not to mention 7X24, and you'd be right. In a nutshell, Enterprise Engineering is a group of 1800-plus people who provide day-to-day monitoring and support to Kaiser Permanente's medical groups, business partners and millions of members. Our infrastructure consists of 6,000-plus servers in numerous platforms running over 2,500 applications servicing more than 130,000 users located in more than 400 medical offices, hospitals and administrative facilities. We make about 2,300 changes a month to our applications, systems and networks, so meeting commitments is a big piece of the challenge. And with so many disparate applications, platforms and code differentials, we're always striving to reduce the complexity of our environment through systems management and automation. As in the practice of medicine, our data centers at Kaiser Permanente are a continuous operation that never stops.

The Capacity Planner reports to the Manager or Senior Manager, Business Capacity Management of Enterprise Capacity and Performance.

The Capacity Planner is responsible for capturing business demand and translating that demand in to computer utilization models for planning, budgeting and prioritizing project asset needs. The Capacity Planner may have many associated activities, which often include:

Conduct application and platform capacity planning Understanding and modeling business activity in the healthcare industry Assist with gathering business workload forecasts Monitor actual workload volume, resource utilization and service level performance on an ongoing basis Constructing simulation models of application behavior Creation and calibration of baseline capacity models Compare capacity demand metrics from business units to actual consumption patterns.Ê Identify patterns of consumption and communicate said consumption to IT operations and IT financeÊ Define requirements for collecting and modeling existing capacity utilization profiles Monitor performance in support of SLAs and Key-Performance Indicators per Capacity Management Process standards: Develop capacity solution recommendations Prepare capacity/performance utilization reports and trend analyses that correlates business driver metrics to resource utilization and trends, to ensure that agreed user requirements/program objectives are met. Help conduct capacity modeling feasibility studies Review operations and technical support future plans Assist in performing workload characterization Continually compare plan to actual statistics, providing input to the capacity planner for the creation of periodic reports to management Assist in the trend analysis process Assist in troubleshooting and identification of performance or capacity issues provide and provide expert analysis Facilitate budget planning and procurement planning of IT asset purchases In this role, he/she will lead, guide and/or partner the capacity management processes with other IT departments, senior leadership and business clients within KPITÊ

This person must be familiar with leading practices in capacity planning, in particular, performance and scalability testing, production monitoring, service level agreements, as well as service management per ITIL. This person will have to coordinate technical issues across end-users, business unit leaders, and partners to ensure adequate capacity.

He or she must also have excellent consultative and communication skills.

Possessing a strong analytical ability and experience with healthcare information systems, and industry performance standards are a plus.

Essential Responsibilities and Duties:

Conduct application and platform capacity planning Understanding and modeling business activity in the healthcare industry Assist with gathering business workload forecasts Monitor actual workload volume, resource utilization and service level performance on an ongoing basis Constructing simulation models of application behavior Creation and calibration of baseline capacity models Compare capacity demand metrics from business units to actual consumption patterns.Ê Identify patterns of consumption and communicate said consumption to IT operations and IT financeÊ Develop and report capacity related metrics (also include financial and performance impact statistics) Assist in process improvement initiatives related to capacity management Develop and maintain process for capacity management per ITIL

Qualifications:

Qualified candidate(s) should have some competency in: Exceptional analytical skills Strong consultative and coaching skills. Previous experience with and understanding of ITIL Capacity Management processes Demonstrated proficiency at modeling within Microsoft Excel Demonstrated proficiency coding in SAS RequiresÊ 5+ years experience of capacity management functions Proven track record of producing and meeting plans and schedules for variety of technical projects Deep knowledge of one or more architectural components (ex. Mid-range servers, Citrix, network routers, etc.) Excellent verbal and written communication skills Bachelors degree. Masters degree preferred. ITIL certification is a plus. In-depth knowledge of the KP-IT systems and applications is a plus. In-depth knowledge of business systems and industry requirements Excellent interpersonal, analytical/ troubleshooting, documentation, and communications skills Excellent presentation and communication skills; must be able to effectively present to and interact with senior managers In-depth knowledge of methods for forecasting & planning In-depth knowledge of building budgets and plans supporting business processing demands in a healthcare industry.

5  Hitachi Data Systems

6  Barclays Global Investors

Overview

Barclays Global Investors (BGI) is America's largest money manager, providing structured investment strategies such as indexing, risk-controlled active products, and exchange traded funds to investors worldwide. For 35 years, BGI has been at the forefront of developing innovative investment ideas, applying science and technology to the investment process. Headquartered in San Francisco the Barclays PLC subsidiary employs over 3,500 people globally and manages $2 trillion in assets.

This position will be responsible for overall capacity planning for the Server teams at BGI. The key responsibilities include interfacing with platform leads, application groups, and Infrastructure teams to define capacity planning requirements, reports, and delivery mechanisms and to formulate a server strategy to meet those needs cost effectively

Key Job Responsibilities

The Server Capacity Planning Manager role oversees the allocation and delivery of service capacity to users. The Server Capacity Planning Manager is responsible for planning, monitoring, and reporting activities relating to system and solution capacity, performance measurement, and forecast in the Server organization.

The Server Capacity Planning Manager may be responsible for many planning and audit activities, which often include:

• Driving the creation of a server capacity strategy which meets business requirements both from a functional and cost perspective
  
  
• Forecasting future service capacity requirements.
  
  
• Ensuring that capacity targets can be achieved at a reasonable cost.
  
  
• Assisting in the creation and review of new service level agreements (SLAs).
  
  
• Providing consulting expertise for the review and creation of any external contracts that include capacity clauses.
  
  
• Using modeling tools and other capacity planning techniques
  
  

The capacity manager may also responsible for managing the day-to-day capacity requirements of services, including:

• Monitoring resource availability and performance.
  
  
• Capturing metrics and creating performance reports.
  
  
• Identifying tuning configuration items affecting performance and submitting requests for change as necessary.
  
  
• Assisting with incident and problem management activities when they are capacity related.
  
  
• Analyzing root causes behind, and preventative measures to avoid, capacity constraint events
  
  
• Identify demand management opportunities to optimize resource utilization.
  
  
• Reviewing, testing, and approving changes that have capacity impact.
  
  
• Reviewing relevant project documentation to get ahead of capacity requirements for projects.
  
  
• Polling the business customer on non-technical business projects/trends that might have capacity implications.
  
  
• Submitting RFCs for schedule changes and the addition or removal of jobs from batch runs
  
  
• Ensuring availability is not impacted by capacity related incidents.
  
  

Technical / Functional Specifications

• Generally have 7-plus years (or equivalent knowledge base) work experience in IT Systems.
  
  
• 5+ years experience with Capacity Management in a production environment.
  
  
• 3+ years experience with development language, such as Perl and/or Java.
  
  
• Statistical understanding of Capacity Planning.
  
  
• Experience with HP Openview Performance Insight a plus.
  
  
• Completes tasks independently/interdependently.
  
  
• Consequences of error carry a high risk to the organization.
  
  

Core Knowledge

• Knowledge of key system engineering.
  
  
• Knowledge across technical/business environments.
  
  

Reporting Relationships

Other key internal relationships - with what other positions will this job regularly interface?

Server team, Enterprise System Monitoring (ESM), Other Infrastructure teams including Databases, Messaging, etc. Application Development teams.

Key external relationships (if any) Ð with what other external organizations/contact will this job regularly interface?

Platform vendors, capacity planning and management vendors

Other Factors

Other Job Factors to be posted: Some travel to other BGI locations may occasionally be required. Off hour meetings or conference calls may be required to work with non-US based personnel.

7  Wily Technologies

Position:

Performance Engineer in any of South San Francisco and Redwood City, CA, and in Framingham, MA.

Wily Technologies is part of Computer Associates.

Job Overview:

This position is responsible to help design and perform complex measurement studies characterizing product performance and stability in demanding real world situations. Use a variety of tools including industry standard benchmarks, as well as custom developed test software, to observe product performance across diverse hardware, operating systems, application servers, and databases. Help construct specialized scenarios to measure product scalability, stability, and fault tolerance. Resulting data will be used to enhance performance and scalability of the core product against a baseline. In addition, help consolidate, analyze, and present data in formal capacity planning guides containing formulas, scenarios, and best practices.

Key Responsibilities:

• Design and run extensive overhead, scalability, stability, and stress tests using industry standard benchmarks and custom developed software
  
  
• Work with Development, Support, and Sustaining teams to reproduce complex performance problems
  
  
• Analyze test results and write capacity planning / customer best practice guides
  
  
• Automate test scenarios using Java, Jython, and other scripting languages
  
  
• Maintain test lab equipment and improve testing efficiency and test lab utilization
  
  

Specific Skills and Certifications:

Outstanding attention to detail and communication skills. Strong programming skills in Java, Jython, C++, or C. Strong troubleshooting and reasoning skills. Strong understanding of throughput, latency, memory and CPU utilization. Ability to analyze / interpret technical data. Ability to identify / resolve system bottlenecks. Ability to identify potential limitations in software architectures. Ability to write clear and concise technical documents. Ability to re-configure test hardware / software from scratch. Working knowledge of operating system design / tuning (e.g. Windows, Solaris, AIX). Working knowledge of database tuning and administration (e.g. Oracle, DB2). Knowledge of appserver load testing / benchmark software (e.g. SPECJAppserver, WebBench). Considered a 'plus' if the candidate is familiar with:

• Application servers (e.g. Weblogic, WebSphere, IPlanet)
  
  
• J2EE Technologies (e.g. JSP, Servlets, EJB, JNDI, Web Services)
  
  
• TCP/IP, networking topology, routers, switches
  
  
• Network packet sniffers (e.g. Windump, Microsoft Network Monitor, EtherPeek, Observer)
  
  
• Webserver load generation utilities (e.g. TestMaker, LoadRunner, SilkPerformer)