Senior Associate, UAT Tester

New York Life • Lebanon, NJ

2d • $100,000 - $143,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

New York Life’s Cross FX Enablement team within the Field Experience Value Stream is transforming User Acceptance Testing into a strategic Experience Assurance capability. The UAT Senior Associate helps ensure releases are experience-ready by validating business readiness, cross-product workflows, and critical advisor, agent, and client experiences across products, systems, and business processes.

Working with Product Managers, Product Owners, Business Analysts, Quality Assurance, Engineering, Operations, and field stakeholders, this role defines risk-based validation strategies, identifies critical user journeys, assesses release readiness, and provides fact-based recommendations throughout the delivery lifecycle. The role engages early in discovery and delivery to influence requirements quality, acceptance criteria, testability, and validation strategy.

The position emphasizes real-world business outcomes and advisor experiences, using automation, production insights, field feedback, and continuous improvement to reduce production risk and increase release confidence across the Field Experience Value Stream.

Requirements

• At least 5 years of experience in User Acceptance Testing, Experience Validation, Quality Assurance, Business Analysis, Product Delivery, or related disciplines.
• 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 and ability to manage multiple high-priority initiatives simultaneously.
• The role requires FINRA licensed and/or FINRA Associated Person pre-hire fingerprinting.

Nice To Haves

• Bachelor’s degree preferred.

Responsibilities

• Assess initiatives and select an appropriate UAT engagement tier 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.
• Participate early in discovery, refinement, and planning to improve requirements quality and readiness.
• Review and influence user stories, acceptance criteria, business scenarios, and dependencies to ensure they are testable and aligned with business outcomes.
• Advise Product Managers, Product Owners, and Business Analysts on business validation and experience assurance strategies.
• Define and validate critical advisor, agent, and client journeys across products, systems, and business processes.
• Identify cross-product dependencies, workflow handoffs, and integration points that may affect business readiness and user experience.
• Validate end-to-end business outcomes rather than isolated product features.
• Develop journey-based validation scenarios, test strategies, and business readiness assessments.
• Map critical user journeys to regression and automation coverage to identify gaps and improvement opportunities.
• Partner with QA and engineering teams on scalable automation strategies, AI-assisted testing opportunities, and coverage expansion.
• Execute end-to-end validation 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.
• Analyze production incidents, support tickets, advisor feedback, and recurring operational issues to identify validation coverage gaps.
• Convert production learnings into testing scenarios, regression suites, journey validations, and process improvements.
• Contribute to UAT governance, standards, templates, metrics, frameworks, and operating model improvements.
• 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.
• Manage multiple high-priority initiatives and influence stakeholders across Product, QA, BA, Engineering, and Business organizations.

Benefits

• Annual discretionary bonus eligibility and possible participation in an incentive program.
• Comprehensive employee benefits package.
• Leave programs.
• Adoption assistance.
• Student loan repayment programs.
• Employee giving and volunteerism supported by the Foundation.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed