What are the skills required for LoadTester

To become a DECENT run of the mill Loadrunner engineer,

I would first recommend understanding the various processes and
theory's of performance testing, tuning. After all LoadRunner is
simply a tool to facilitate the process. If you don't know the
process you're throwing darts drunk and blindfolded.

HardSkills which serve well...
C programing.
Basic understanding of the Network Stack and a little bit of
everything else. You don't have to know Data Modeling but you should
know SQL, You don't need to know Diferential Algebra but you should
understand Statistics. You don't need to know queuing theory but you
should learn how to determine a bottle neck.

SoftSkills which serve well...
project management, charisma (you'll need to beg, bribe, charm or
threaten to get your requirements)
* Components such as web servers, application servers, database servers, operating systems, networks and network elements such as load balancers.

Here you can the summary of skills of LoadTesters in a nutshell

* You need not have "guru" level knowledge of each of the components but should have operational knowledge and an understanding of the performance issues associated with the components.
* For example, a load tester should know what multi-way joins, indexes and spin counts are and what affect they have on a database server.

* Protocol(s) used between the client and server such as HTTP/HTML, ODBC, SQL*NET, and DCOM.

* The LoadRunner script language is ANSI C. It helps to know the C language, but the scripts are generated and manipulated by LoadRunner, so there is usually not need to directly edit the code. There is also a icon script view which completely hides the C code.

* Load testing is not a heads down coding exercise. You will work with many parts of an organization to coordinate activities, schedules and resources.

* Daily interaction with a variety of people requires good oral and written communication skills as well as good people skills. If you prefer to sit in a cube by yourself, you should stay in functional testing or development.