UAT and Production Support, Senior Associate

Location Designation: Hybrid - 3 days per week Role Overview New York Life’s Cross FX Enablement team within the Field Experience (FX) Value Stream is seeking a highly analytical, detail‑oriented UAT and Production Support Senior Associate to support a large portfolio of critical field‑facing digital capabilities and platforms. This is a combined role that supports business‑led UAT execution and certification with day‑to‑day production support, incident and problem ticket research, release readiness, and post‑release feedback management. What You’ll Do UAT Strategy, Planning & Business Certification Convert business objectives, personas, and acceptance intent from BA/PO partners into UAT plans, scope, timelines, entry/exit criteria, and certification checkpoints aligned to release plans and environments. Define end‑to‑end must‑pass user journeys across integrated systems, identify cross‑product dependencies, test data needs, and business readiness risks. Provide fact‑based go/no‑go input for release using pass rates, unresolved defects, business impact, mitigations, and acceptance evidence. Test Design, Data Preparation & Automation Author executable test cases and scripts grounded in real‑world agent workflows, including functional, exploratory, negative, regression, Alpha/Beta, and integrated business scenarios. Map test coverage to epics, stories, requirements, and acceptance criteria for traceability and release confidence. Partner with QA/Data teams to source or synthesize production‑like datasets and build or maintain targeted automation for high‑value regression paths where appropriate. Test Execution, Defect Lifecycle & Fix Validation Execute planned UAT tests and document clear evidence, results, defects, and business impact to support prioritization and release decisions. Log, triage, retest, and validate defects in partnership with BA/PO, QA/Engineering, and Technology Production Support teams. Recreate production defects in test environments, identify coverage gaps, validate fixes before release, and feed lessons learned into future UAT plans and regression suites. Production Support, Incident & Queue Operations Run day‑to‑day queue reviews of production tickets, validate severity and business impact, chase blocked items, and coordinate repro steps with QA/Engineering and Technology Production Support teams. Track release‑carried defects, known issues, and hypercare items; flag risk of volume spikes to Help Desk and Product partners and recommend mitigation approaches proactively. Maintain accurate ticket status, ETAs, acceptance evidence, and closure discipline to ensure defects and incidents are opened, updated, prioritized, and closed on time. Release Readiness, Help Desk Enablement & Knowledge Transfer Support release readiness stage gates across training, FAQs, field communications, Help Desk playbooks, KB articles, scenario walkthroughs, runbooks, rollback considerations, and hypercare planning. Participate in PO‑driven readiness activities and KT sessions from Engineering/PO/BA to Technology Production Support teams for assigned epics, features, and known issues. Escalate readiness, training, environment, or support gaps promptly to the manager and PM/PO to reduce user complaints and increase confidence in product quality. Report on detailed call volumes/incident insights through data analysis. Problem Management, Insights, Metrics & Business Communications Support RCAs and document corrective/preventive actions; monitor follow‑through and validate that fixes reduce repeat incidents and production noise. Analyze patterns across UAT results, production incidents, defects, VOC, Help Desk contacts, and field feedback to propose backlog items, process improvements, training updates, or automation opportunities. Track and report SLOs/SLAs, MTTR, severity mix, repeat incidents, defect trends, UAT execution metrics, readiness risks, and post‑incident readouts in partnership with Technology and Product teams. Draft clear, business‑friendly communications for high‑priority incidents, release risks, and field‑facing updates in coordination with Field Enablement and Field Communication partners. What You’ll Bring You bring equal strength in business‑savvy UAT and disciplined production support, translating BA/PO intent into risk‑based test coverage while also driving production tickets, incidents, and defects to timely resolution. You are comfortable moving between test planning, execution, evidence capture, go/no‑go input, queue management, incident triage, Help Desk enablement, and post‑release learning. You are a crisp collaborator, user advocate, and problem‑solver who can translate technical detail into clear business updates, classify severity and business impact, coordinate across BA/PO/QA/Engineering/UAT/Technology Production Support, spot patterns across defects and VOC trends, and turn those insights into actionable backlog recommendations. Required Skills 5+ years of software testing/UAT, production/application support, incident/problem management, technology support, or business operations experience; financial services or insurance experience a plus. Strong knowledge of life insurance, financial management, or field/advisor workflows, with the ability to design realistic user scenarios and assess business impact. Familiarity with ITSM/ticketing, Agile, defect management, requirements traceability, release/change practices, and hypercare support tools and processes (ServiceNow/JSM/Jira/Confluence or similar). Experience building or contributing to automated tests for targeted regression coverage, along with strong manual testing, evidence capture, and fix validation discipline. Strong written and verbal communication skills; can translate technical issues, test results, incident updates, and release risks into business‑ready communications and go/no‑go recommendations. Proven ability to collaborate across BA/PO/QA/Engineering/UAT/Technology Production Support/Help Desk teams and represent the user’s voice in triage, prioritization, readiness, and backlog discussions. Preferred Skills Bias for action; excels at cross‑team coordination, follow‑up, and user‑first decision making. Demonstrated ability to identify, define and understand a problem, have knowledge of root cause analysis, and research effective solutions for the customer. Strong analytical, written, verbal and communication skills with the demonstrated ability to work with all levels within the organization. Must be very organized and have excellent follow‑up skills. Must be team oriented in interacting with a diverse group. A proactive self‑starter with the ability to work independently with minimal supervision. Strong attention to accuracy and detail. Handles multiple competing priorities in a fast‑paced, deadline‑driven environment. Agile experience and experience with agile development tools such as JIRA, Confluence, and industry standard testing product suite. Experience in use of AI tools and testing AI applications. 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. #J-18808-Ljbffr