Corporate Vice President - Quality Engineering & Enablement Lead

New York Life; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 119,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

New York Life is seeking a high-impact Quality Engineering Architecture & Enablement Leader to define strategy, architecture, and automation across Product Solutions within a complex financial services environment.

This role requires hands-on engineering depth, plus 10+ years leading Quality Engineering and a track record delivering automation-first platforms across insurance, annuities, and wealth management domains. Hybrid work with three days on site in New York Life's locations.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in a technical field required.
• 15+ years engineering and Quality Engineering experience.
• 10+ years in leadership of quality engineering teams.

Responsibilities

• Define and execute Quality Engineering strategy and target architecture.
• Establish common infrastructure, testing environments, and data strategies.
• Embed automated testing and quality gates into CI/CD and DevSecOps.
• Lead a senior engineering community and cross-domain accountability.

Skills

Quality Engineering leadership

Architecture design

Automation frameworks

CI/CD integration

AI-assisted testing

Education

Bachelor’s degree in a technical discipline

Tools

Automation frameworks

API testing

Data validation

Performance testing

CI/CD tooling

Job description

Location Designation: Hybrid - 3 days per week

Quality Engineering Architecture & Enablement Leader

The market for insurance and financial solutions is evolving rapidly, driven by changes in customer expectations, the economic environment, and the competitive landscape. This changing marketplace provides tailwinds that New York Life can capitalize on to drive growth and headwinds that we must actively address to enhance resiliency. As a result, the way we approach go-to-market must evolve.

We undertook a significant step in this direction by evolving to the operating model. Our vision is to be a leading provider of human-led holistic guidance to affluent and middle markets, enabled by seamless and differentiated experiences across solutions and channels that set us apart in the financial services industry. With visibility into their full financial picture, a tailored holistic financial plan, and the agent’s expertise, prospects will clearly understand the solutions needed to help them both protect and prosper. They will be able to seamlessly apply for multiple solutions to address their broad financial needs. Enabled by a comprehensive view of their finances, clients will have periodic reviews with their agents to assess progress against goals. They will have the flexibility to manage accounts and transactions quickly across our full solution suite in one place through their preferred channel. We will invest in experience enhancements across multiple constituents (e.g., clients, new agents, top advisors, field managers, service professionals). Our goal is to be easy to do business with and to leverage our collective and unified strength, enhancing our position as the preferred destination for both agents and clients.

Role Summary

The Quality Engineering Architecture & Enablement Leader is responsible for defining and executing the strategy, architecture, engineering standards, and automation capabilities across Product Solutions.

The initial mandate for this leader is to establish a consistent, scalable Quality Engineering foundation across product domains, creating the common infrastructure, engineering practices, tooling, and standards required to improve quality and accelerate delivery. This includes establishing a cohesive approach to test environments, test case management, test data, automation frameworks, and integration with software delivery pipelines.

As these capabilities mature, the role will extend vertically into individual product domains, creating a federated model that combines common Quality Engineering infrastructure and standards with deep domain-specific expertise and accountability.

This role requires a deeply technical leader who began their career in hands‑on engineering, personally built automation and Quality Engineering solutions, and progressed through architecture and engineering leadership roles while maintaining strong technical credibility.

This is not a traditional Quality Assurance or testing leadership role. The successful candidate will approach quality as an engineering discipline, embedding quality throughout the software development lifecycle.

The leader will bring significant experience delivering complex, highly integrated financial services programs, preferably within Insurance, Annuities, and Wealth Management, spanning interconnected applications, policy administration platforms, calculation engines, integrations, data platforms, vendor solutions, and legacy and modern technologies.

Quality Engineering Strategy & Architecture

• Define and own the Quality Engineering strategy, target-state architecture, and standards across Product Solutions.
• Establish consistent Quality Engineering infrastructure across domains, including environments, automation frameworks, test management, test data, tooling, reporting, and quality metrics, while rationalizing fragmented tools and frameworks to improve reuse and productivity.
• Define enterprise automation architecture and reusable frameworks that support both common and product-specific requirements.
• Define testing architecture across layers, optimizing where and how quality is validated to improve speed, coverage, maintainability, and cost while reducing unnecessary reliance on end-to-end testing.
• Partner with product-domain engineering and architecture leaders to define domain-specific testing strategies spanning functional, API, integration, data, end-to-end, performance, resiliency, and production validation.
• Embed automated testing, quality gates, observability, and continuous validation into CI/CD and DevSecOps pipelines.
• Apply AI, Generative AI, and intelligent automation to improve test design, automation development, test maintenance, defect analysis, root-cause identification, and overall Quality Engineering productivity.

Technical Leadership & Key Responsibilities

• Assess the current Quality Engineering landscape and execute a multi-year transformation roadmap that establishes common capabilities across Product Solutions and progressively deepens domain-level maturity.
• Establish the environment and test data strategy for complex, interconnected systems, addressing availability, configuration, dependencies, data provisioning, third parties, service virtualization, and automated validation.
• Provide Quality Engineering architecture and enablement leadership for large, complex financial services programs spanning multiple products, platforms, technology organizations, vendors, and delivery teams.
• Establish measurable Quality Engineering outcomes across automation, environment stability, engineering productivity, defect prevention, release quality, resiliency, and production stability.
• Build and develop a strong Quality Engineering organization and technical community, including senior engineers, architects, and engineering leaders.
• Establish clear accountability between shared Quality Engineering capabilities and domain engineering teams, ensuring consistent engineering standards and practices while maintaining strong domain-level quality accountability.

What You’ll Bring

• 15+ years of progressive engineering and Quality Engineering experience, with significant experience designing and delivering quality solutions for large-scale, mission-critical enterprise platforms.
• Demonstrated early-career hands‑on engineering experience is required, including personally building automation frameworks or engineering solutions and progressing through technical and architecture roles into senior engineering leadership.
• 10+ years leading Quality Engineering or related engineering organizations responsible for complex enterprise technology delivery.
• Deep expertise in Quality Engineering architecture and enterprise-scale automation, including automation frameworks, API and integration testing, data validation, performance engineering, test data management, service virtualization, and continuous testing.
• Significant experience delivering complex financial services technology programs, with Insurance, Annuities, and Wealth Management experience strongly preferred, including familiarity with policy administration, product configuration, calculation engines, new business, servicing, integrations, and data platforms.
• Experience engineering quality across complex environments spanning legacy and distributed systems, cloud platforms, APIs, event-driven architectures, third‑party solutions, batch processing, and enterprise data dependencies.
• Demonstrated experience integrating automated Quality Engineering into CI/CD and DevSecOps pipelines.
• Experience transforming traditional QA organizations into engineering-led, automation-first Quality Engineering capabilities.
• Experience with performance, scalability, resiliency, reliability engineering, observability, and production validation for mission-critical platforms.
• Demonstrated experience applying AI‑assisted engineering, Generative AI, and intelligent automation to Quality Engineering.
• Strong architectural judgment with the ability to identify quality and testability risks, influence technical designs, and balance engineering rigor with pragmatic delivery.
• Exceptional technical communication skills with the ability to engage credibly with engineers and architects while communicating quality strategy, risk, investment requirements, and delivery readiness to senior executives and business leaders.

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in a technical discipline. Advanced degree preferred but not required.

The successful candidate is first and foremost a Quality Engineering leader with genuine engineering depth. They combine hands‑on technical credibility, architectural judgment, automation expertise, and organizational leadership to improve the speed, resiliency, and quality of technology delivery across Product Solutions.

Pay Transparency

Salary Range: $119,000-$170,000

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.

Company Overview

At New York Life, our 180-year legacy of purpose and integrity fuels our future. As we evolve into a more technology-, data-, and AI-enabled organization, we remain grounded in the values that drive lasting impact.

Our diverse business portfolio creates opportunities to make a difference across industries and communities—inviting bold thinking, collaborative problem-solving, and purpose-driven innovation. Here, you’ll find the rare balance of long-standing stability and forward momentum, supported by an inclusive team that honors tradition while embracing progress.

As a Fortune 100 mutual company, we offer a place to grow your skills, contribute to meaningful work, and deliver solutions that matter. Your ideas drive what’s next, and your growth powers it.

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.

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.

Recognized as one of Fortune’s World’s Most Admired Companies

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. We're proud that due to our mutuality, we operate in the best interests of our policy owners.