Senior Associate, UAT Tester

Job Requisition ID: 95071

Location Designation: Hybrid - 3 days per week

Business Overview:

New York Lifes Cross FX Enablement team within the Field Experience Value Stream is transforming User Acceptance Testing into a strategic Experience Assurance capability that validates end-to-end advisor, agent, and client experiences across products, systems, and business processes.

Role Overview:

The UAT Senior Associate plays a critical role in ensuring releases are experience-ready, not just test-complete, by focusing on business readiness, cross-product workflow validation, and release confidence.

Working closely with Product Managers, Product Owners, Business Analysts, Quality Assurance, Engineering, Operations, and field stakeholders, this role helps define risk-based validation strategies, identify critical user journeys, assess release readiness, and provide fact-based recommendations throughout the delivery lifecycle. UAT participates early through a shift-left engagement model, influencing requirements quality, acceptance criteria, testability, and validation strategy before development is complete.

This role focuses on validating real-world business outcomes, advisor experiences, and cross-product workflows while leveraging automation, production insights, field feedback, and continuous improvement practices to reduce production risk and release confidence across the Field Experience Value Stream

What You'll Do:

1) Experience Assurance Strategy & Tiered Engagement

• Assess initiatives and determine the appropriate UAT engagement model (Tier 1, Tier 2, or Tier 3) based on business risk, cross-product impact, integration complexity, regulatory exposure, and advisor experience impact.
• Define risk-based validation strategies focused on end-to-end business workflows and critical advisor journeys.
• Align UAT activities with PI planning, release planning, roadmap priorities, and value stream objectives.

2) Shift-Left Quality & Requirements Readiness

• Participate early in discovery, refinement, and planning activities to improve requirements quality and readiness.
• Review and influence user stories, acceptance criteria, business scenarios, and dependency identification to ensure they are testable and aligned to business outcomes.
• Provide consultative guidance to Product Managers, Product Owners, and Business Analysts on business validation and experience assurance strategies.

3) End-to-End Journey Validation

• Define and validate critical advisor, agent, and client journeys across multiple products, systems, and business processes.
• Identify cross-product dependencies, workflow handoffs, and integration points that may impact business readiness and user experience.
• Validate end-to-end business outcomes rather than isolated product features.

4) Test Design, Automation & Coverage Management

• Develop journey-based validation scenarios, test strategies, and business readiness assessments.
• Map critical user journeys to existing regression and automation coverage to identify gaps and improvement opportunities.
• Partner with QA and engineering teams to support scalable automation strategies, AI-assisted testing opportunities, and coverage expansion.

5) Release Readiness & Risk Assessment

• Execute end-to-end validation activities for prioritized initiatives based on engagement tier.
• Evaluate production readiness, unresolved defects, dependency risks, mitigation plans, and potential business impacts.
• Provide release-readiness assessments and go/no-go recommendations to delivery and business leadership.

6) Production Insights & Continuous Improvement

• Analyze production incidents, support tickets, advisor feedback, and recurring operational issues to identify validation coverage gaps.
• Convert production learnings into future testing scenarios, regression suites, journey validations, and process improvements.
• Contribute to UAT governance, standards, templates, metrics, frameworks, and operating model improvements across the value stream.

7) Cross-Functional Leadership & Business Partnership

• Act as a consultative partner enabling quality and business readiness across the delivery lifecycle.
• Facilitate collaboration across Product, BA, QA, Engineering, Operations, and Business teams to improve release confidence and customer outcomes.
• Represent advisor and field-user perspectives in readiness discussions, defect triage, and release decisions.

What You'll Bring:

• 5+ years of experience in User Acceptance Testing, Experience Validation, Quality Assurance, Business Analysis, Product Delivery, or related disciplines.
• Bachelor's Degree Preferred
• Strong understanding of life insurance, annuity, wealth management, advisor, and field-service business processes.
• Experience validating end-to-end business workflows across integrated systems and product ecosystems.
• Demonstrated ability to assess business risk, release readiness, and cross-product impacts.
• Experience working within Agile delivery models, PI Planning, backlog refinement, and iterative product development.
• Knowledge of requirements management, user story development, acceptance criteria design, and business readiness practices.
• Experience with automation strategies, regression planning, coverage analysis, and AI-enabled testing approaches.
• Ability to analyze production incidents, support trends, and customer feedback to improve future validation coverage.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, facilitation, and decision-support skills.
• Excellent written, verbal, stakeholder management, and executive communication capabilities.
• Experience with Agile delivery and collaboration tools such as JIRA, Confluence, and industry-standard testing platforms.
• Ability to influence without authority across Product, QA, BA, Engineering, and Business organizations.
• Strong organizational skills with the ability to manage multiple high-priority initiatives simultaneously

#LI -EM1

#LI - HYBRID

Job Level: LEVELPF4

Pay Transparency

Salary Range: $100,000-$143,000

Overtime eligible: Exempt

Discretionary bonus eligible: Yes

Sales bonus eligible: No

Actual base salary will be determined based on several factors but not limited to individual's experience, skills, qualifications, and job location. Additionally, employees are eligible for an annual discretionary bonus. In addition to base salary, employees may also be eligible to participate in an incentive program.

Please note: This role requires FINRA licensed and/or FINRA Associated Person pre-hire fingerprinting.

Our Benefits

We provide a full package of benefits for employees - and have unique offerings for a modern workforce, including leave programs, adoption assistance, and student loan repayment programs. Based on feedback from our employees, we continue to refine and add benefits to our offering, so that you can flourish both inside and outside of work. Click here to discover more about our comprehensive benefit options or visit our NYL Benefits Site.

Our Commitment to Inclusion

At New York Life, fostering an inclusive workplace is fundamental to who we are and how we serve our communities. We have a longstanding commitment to creating an environment where individuals can contribute their best and succeed together. This foundation is rooted in our core values of humanity and integrity, ensuring that every employee feels valued and supported. By embracing a broad range of perspectives and experiences, we achieve greater success and fulfill our promise of providing financial security and peace of mind to families across all communities. Click here to learn more about New York Life's leadership in this space.

Recognized as one of Fortune's World's Most Admired Companies, New York Life is committed to improving local communities through a culture of employee giving and volunteerism, supported by the Foundation. Were proud that due to our mutuality, we operate in the best interests of our policy owners. To learn more about career opportunities at New York Life,please visit the Careers page of www.NewYorkLife.com.

Job Requisition ID: 95071