Senior Associate - Quality Engineer, AI & Automation

Location Designation: Hybrid - 3 days per week Role OverviewNew York Life is seeking a Senior Associate, Quality Engineer to help build modern, automation-first quality practices across our Wealth Management technology platforms. This is a hands-on engineering role for someone who can code, understand the business, challenge designs, and use AI-enabled tooling to improve how quality is built into software from the first requirement through production release.This is not a manual testing role. The right candidate will design and build automated test frameworks, review developer unit test strategies, improve CI/CD quality gates, analyze defect patterns, and partner with engineers and product owners to make systems more testable, observable, resilient, and <business-ready.You> will work across advisor, client, account, portfolio, transaction, data, integration, and reporting workflows that support wealth management outcomes in a regulated financial services environment. The role requires enough business fluency to know where quality risk hides: in account data, householding, balances, holdings, transactions, suitability-sensitive workflows, integrations, reports, and downstream advisor/client experiences. What You’ll DoDesign, build, and maintain automated test suites across API, UI, integration, data, regression, and end-to-end workflows.Write clean, maintainable automation code using modern engineering practices, including reusable libraries, test utilities, fixtures, mocks, service virtualization, and test data management.Use AI and GenAI-enabled tools to accelerate test design, coverage analysis, defect triage, test data generation, regression optimization, and failure pattern detection.Partner with software engineers to review unit test strategy, code coverage, edge-case coverage, mocks/stubs, contract tests, and test results before code moves downstream.Participate in design and architecture reviews to improve testability, observability, reliability, determinism, data validation, resiliency, and operational <supportability.Build> automation into CI/CD pipelines so quality signals are fast, visible, repeatable, and actionable.Develop automated quality gates for pull requests, builds, deployments, APIs, data contracts, and release readiness.Analyze recurring defects and production incidents to identify systemic quality gaps and drive root-cause prevention.Create dashboards and reporting that show meaningful quality health: automation coverage, failure trends, flaky tests, escaped defects, regression duration, release confidence, and risk hotspots.Collaborate with Product, Engineering, Architecture, DevSecOps, Release Management, and business stakeholders to define test strategy for complex wealth management features.Translate business scenarios into automation coverage that reflects how advisors, clients, operations teams, and downstream systems actually use the <platform.Help> raise the engineering bar by mentoring peers on automation design, test strategy, AI-assisted quality practices, and quality-by-design thinking. AI & Technical ExpectationsThe ideal candidate should be comfortable using AI as an engineering accelerator—not as magic dust sprinkled on stale test cases.Expected hands-on capabilities include:Applying GenAI tools responsibly to generate, refactor, review, and maintain automation code.Using AI to summarize failures, cluster defects, detect flaky tests, identify regression risk, and improve coverage.Understanding prompt design, evaluation, reproducibility, privacy constraints, and human review when using AI in a regulated environment.Building or integrating automation utilities that leverage LLMs, embeddings, or intelligent heuristics where appropriate.Validating AI-assisted outputs rather than blindly trusting them.Working with APIs, SQL/data validation, CI/CD pipelines, source control, test frameworks, and cloud or containerized environments. What Success Looks LikeIncreased automated coverage across high-value wealth management workflows.Reduced reliance on manual regression testing.Faster feedback to developers through CI/CD-integrated quality gates.Better unit, API, integration, and end-to-end test strategies.Fewer escaped defects and less defect recurrence.Cleaner architecture decisions because testability and operability are considered earlier.Improved visibility into quality health, release risk, and automation <value.Business> partners trust the quality signals because the automation reflects real advisor and client workflows. What You’ll Bring3+ years of hands-on experience in quality engineering, software engineering, SDET, or test automation <roles.Direct> experience in wealth management, brokerage, advisory, asset management, insurance/annuity platforms, or closely related financial services technology.Strong coding ability in at least one modern language, preferably Python, Java, JavaScript, or TypeScript.Experience building automated tests using tools and frameworks such as pytest, Selenium, mabl, Playwright, Cypress, REST Assured, Postman/Newman, Cucumber/BDD, JUnit, TestNG, or equivalent.Strong API testing experience, including REST services, schema validation, contract testing, negative testing, authentication, authorization, and integration flows.Working knowledge of SQL and data validation, including reconciliation-style testing across systems, files, APIs, databases, and reports.Experience integrating automated tests into CI/CD pipelines using tools such as Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps, or equivalent.Familiarity with Git, pull requests, branching strategies, code reviews, and software engineering SDLC practices.Ability to review developer unit test strategies and identify missing scenarios, weak assertions, poor mocks, inadequate boundary testing, and fragile coverage.Understanding of quality patterns for distributed systems, including observability, logging, monitoring, resilience, retries, idempotency, data contracts, and environment stability.Experience using AI-enabled developer tools, test generation tools, or LLM-based productivity tools to improve engineering delivery.Strong analytical skills and the ability to turn defect trends, test failures, and business risk into practical engineering action.Clear communication skills with the ability to explain technical quality risks to engineers, product owners, and business partners. Preferred QualificationsISTQB Foundation, ISTQB Advanced Test Automation Engineer, or equivalent practical experience.Experience with wealth management workflows such as client onboarding, account opening, advisor desktop tools, portfolio management, holdings, balances, transactions, managed accounts, performance reporting, financial planning, or custodial integrations.Experience with cloud platforms, containers, service virtualization, test data automation, or ephemeral test environments.Experience with contract testing tools such as Pact or OpenAPI-based validation.Familiarity with observability tools such as Splunk, Datadog, Dynatrace, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, or similar.Experience testing AI-enabled applications, including model output validation, guardrail testing, regression evaluation, and auditability.Exposure to regulated financial services controls, including data privacy, auditability, access control, and release governance. Why This Role MattersQuality in wealth management is not cosmetic. A missed field, stale holding, broken integration, or incorrect account balance can erode trust fast. This role helps New York Life deliver software with confidence by making quality part of the engineering fabric—not a checkpoint at the end of the <road.You> will help move the organization to intelligent, automated, AI-accelerated quality engineering. The work is hands-on, technical, and business-critical. The payoff is simple: faster delivery, fewer surprises, and platforms that advisors and clients can trust. Pay TransparencySalary Range: $81,000-$115,500 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. <span style="font-family:tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-ser