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The differences between senior performance engineers and software engineers 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 software engineer. Additionally, a senior performance engineer has an average salary of $110,382, which is higher than the $100,260 average annual salary of a software engineer.
The top three skills for a senior performance engineer include java, jmeter and linux. The most important skills for a software engineer are java, python, and software development.
| Senior Performance Engineer | Software Engineer | |
| Yearly salary | $110,382 | $100,260 |
| Hourly rate | $53.07 | $48.20 |
| Growth rate | 11% | 21% |
| Number of jobs | 95,530 | 339,938 |
| Job satisfaction | - | 3.5 |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 66% | Bachelor's Degree, 73% |
| Average age | 44 | 39 |
| 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 software engineer is a computer science professional who is responsible for the development of information systems, designing and building computer systems software and applications software. They often prefer to call themselves as a software developer or computer programmer. They have substantial knowledge of programming languages, software development, and computer operating systems, and other technologies. They use these to turn a plan into a final output. They can create a design, test, and develop software based on the needs of their clients.
Senior performance engineers and software engineers have different pay scales, as shown below.
| Senior Performance Engineer | Software Engineer | |
| Average salary | $110,382 | $100,260 |
| Salary range | Between $83,000 And $146,000 | Between $73,000 And $136,000 |
| Highest paying City | San Mateo, CA | San Bruno, CA |
| Highest paying state | California | California |
| Best paying company | Netflix | The Citadel |
| Best paying industry | Technology | Start-up |
There are a few differences between a senior performance engineer and a software engineer in terms of educational background:
| Senior Performance Engineer | Software Engineer | |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 66% | Bachelor's Degree, 73% |
| Most common major | Computer Science | Computer Science |
| Most common college | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Harvard University |
Here are the differences between senior performance engineers' and software engineers' demographics:
| Senior Performance Engineer | Software Engineer | |
| Average age | 44 | 39 |
| Gender ratio | Male, 76.2% Female, 23.8% | Male, 78.0% Female, 22.0% |
| 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, 4.4% Unknown, 4.8% Hispanic or Latino, 8.1% Asian, 34.0% White, 48.5% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.2% |
| LGBT Percentage | 11% | 8% |