QA Lead/SME-Annuity Policy Administration Systems

About the Role

This position serves as the QA Lead and Subject Matter Expert (SME) for Annuity Policy Administration Systems, focusing on ALIP, FAST, or other annuity policy administration products. You will define and own the end-to-end QA strategy for annuity transformation programs and act as the primary QA liaison across business, IT, actuarial, compliance, and PMO teams.

Responsibilities

• Define and own the end-to-end QA strategy and test architecture for ALIP-based Annuity transformation programs.
• Establish quality standards, governance models, and best practices aligned with Guardian Life enterprise QA and risk frameworks.
• Serve as the onsite QA face-off lead, managing stakeholder expectations across business, IT, actuarial, compliance, and PMO teams.
• Provide domain leadership for Annuities, including Fixed and Variable Annuities, riders, payouts, surrenders, fees, and annuitization scenarios.
• Validate ALIP product configuration, rules, transactions, and integrations from a quality and business correctness standpoint.
• Own and review Master Test Plans, Phase-wise Test Strategies, and Release Readiness criteria.
• Govern test execution across SIT, E2E, Regression, UAT support, Parallel Runs, and Dress Rehearsals.
• Ensure strong requirements-to-test traceability and proactive defect prevention.
• Lead defect triage, root cause analysis, and risk mitigation for high-severity and cross-system issues.
• Define and drive automation strategy for ALIP, focusing on API, service-level, and regression automation.
• Establish test data management and data validation strategies for complex annuity contracts and financial scenarios.
• Ensure accuracy of financial calculations, accounting feeds, and downstream reporting validations.
• Lead and mentor offshore QA teams, enabling effective handoffs, standards adherence, and delivery excellence.
• Provide executive-level quality metrics and dashboards, highlighting risk, coverage, defect trends, and readiness.
• Support regulatory audits, compliance reviews, and production readiness assessments with robust QA artifacts.
• Drive continuous improvement initiatives, including shift-left testing, risk-based testing, and Agile/Scaled Agile QE adoption.
• Act as a quality transformation partner, reducing cost of quality while improving speed, reliability, and customer outcomes.

Requirements

• Expertise in Annuity Policy Administration Systems such as ALIP, FAST, or similar products.
• Deep domain knowledge of Fixed and Variable Annuities, including riders, payouts, surrenders, fees, and annuitization scenarios.
• Experience in defining QA strategies, test architectures, and governance models.
• Proven leadership in managing stakeholder expectations and cross-functional teams.
• Strong background in test execution, defect triage, and root cause analysis.
• Experience with test automation, particularly API, service-level, and regression automation.
• Ability to lead and mentor offshore QA teams.
• Proficiency in creating quality metrics, dashboards, and supporting regulatory audits.