A software company here in Indy is looking for someone who can help them build out some automation using Selenium. The work is most likely part-time and remote applicants are more then welcome (if not preferred). They are an all Linux environment and the candidate should be able to integrate the tests into Cruisecontrol, Rspec [...]

There are "architects" and there are "Architects", of course. Some guy or gal who looks over your shoulder and occasionally suggests that "you could use the visitor pattern to do that" is one thing.

But "Architects" with a capital "A", they're just an almighty pain in the arse. Architects with a capital "A" speak at conferences and write in journals and very often work for tool or platform vendors, or are very closely associated with them. They spend most of their time and effort promoting a specific solution.

Looks like the pre-production validation approach to performance testing becomes typical for large corporations (if there is any at all):

-get the system ready
-develop all scripts requested (sometimes offshore)
-run them all together
-compare with the requirements provided
-allow some percentage of errors according to the requirements
-involve the development team if requirements were missed