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The differences between senior performance engineers and quality assurance leads can be seen in a few details. Each job has different responsibilities and duties. It typically takes 2-4 years to become both a senior performance engineer and a quality assurance lead. Additionally, a senior performance engineer has an average salary of $110,382, which is higher than the $94,758 average annual salary of a quality assurance lead.
The top three skills for a senior performance engineer include java, jmeter and linux. The most important skills for a quality assurance lead are QA, test cases, and test plan.
| Senior Performance Engineer | Quality Assurance Lead | |
| Yearly salary | $110,382 | $94,758 |
| Hourly rate | $53.07 | $45.56 |
| Growth rate | 11% | - |
| Number of jobs | 95,530 | 82,242 |
| Job satisfaction | - | 5 |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 66% | Bachelor's Degree, 65% |
| Average age | 44 | 44 |
| Years of experience | 4 | 4 |
Senior Performance Engineers are responsible for optimizing production systems to support traffic growth and new products. Their duties include creating a best practice framework for performance monitoring, scalability, and dependency handling, as well as developing testing infrastructure for post-deployment of production. They are responsible for designing alerts and dashboards, addressing performance issues, conducting root-cause analysis, defining process architecture, and facilitating site reliability in determining requirements for product scalability. Senior Performance Engineers also develop training programs to mentor operation services personnel.
A quality assurance lead, also known as QA Lead, is responsible for conducting necessary quality tests and analyses for software program and development. As a quality assurance lead, they must take the lead in ensuring quality during development by proactively performing critical evaluations, troubleshooting, and providing precise documentation. It is also essential to identify issues and resolve them as soon as possible. Furthermore, a quality assurance lead must maintain an active line of communication and coordination as most of the work will be in a team setting.
Senior performance engineers and quality assurance leads have different pay scales, as shown below.
| Senior Performance Engineer | Quality Assurance Lead | |
| Average salary | $110,382 | $94,758 |
| Salary range | Between $83,000 And $146,000 | Between $72,000 And $123,000 |
| Highest paying City | San Mateo, CA | San Francisco, CA |
| Highest paying state | California | California |
| Best paying company | Netflix | Meta |
| Best paying industry | Technology | Retail |
There are a few differences between a senior performance engineer and a quality assurance lead in terms of educational background:
| Senior Performance Engineer | Quality Assurance Lead | |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 66% | Bachelor's Degree, 65% |
| Most common major | Computer Science | Computer Science |
| Most common college | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
Here are the differences between senior performance engineers' and quality assurance leads' demographics:
| Senior Performance Engineer | Quality Assurance Lead | |
| Average age | 44 | 44 |
| Gender ratio | Male, 76.2% Female, 23.8% | Male, 63.0% Female, 37.0% |
| Race ratio | Black or African American, 6.2% Unknown, 4.7% Hispanic or Latino, 8.8% Asian, 12.0% White, 67.7% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.5% | Black or African American, 6.2% Unknown, 4.7% Hispanic or Latino, 8.8% Asian, 12.0% White, 67.7% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.5% |
| LGBT Percentage | 11% | 11% |