Manager Operations Business Support

Job Summary

The Manager, Operations Business Support is responsible for forming, leading, and growing an effective, efficient team that manages both the User Acceptance Testing (UAT) discipline as well as the Operations Production Support function encompassing the various technology utilized by F&G Retail Operations teams. This position will be responsible for establishing and driving the team engagement model, operating processes, and communication standards. This position will have a strong focus on the User Acceptance Testing practice which involves collaboration and organizational alignment in establishing and maturing a structured testing discipline aligned to UAT standards and best practices.

This position will report to Director, Operations Business Support and will collaborate with Operations, IT, and other business units to recognize trends, resolve systemic issues, communicate incident details at appropriate levels and audience, as well as drive system improvements.

Duties and Responsibilities

• Distribute executive communications utilizing clear business terminology to a global audience providing details of the incident, incident status, impacts to the business; communications will include next steps and root cause analysis for any item that does not elevate to major incident status.
• Escalate and communicate issues and solutions to the business and technology stakeholders, actively participating from incident reporting to service restoration.
• Support IT Operations by serving as the Retail Operations voice and articulating internal and external business impacts resulting from reported system issues and when necessary, prioritize issues/restoration of functionality for resolution.
• Serve as business contact and champion for the prioritization and implementation of permanent fixes to correct historical production break fixes by collaborating with enterprise problem management teams.
• Create, maintain, and validate documented application processes coupled with efficient and consistent work methodologies that confirm and support audit, security, and disaster recovery for business and resource requirements. Participate and support initiatives for Business Continuity Planning, Disaster Recovery and Audit.
• Responsible for planning, coordination, and control of user acceptance testing activities for projects impacting Retail Operations systems and processes.
• Drive the development of comprehensive UAT testing strategies; ensure that 100% of test cases are created, tested, and validated if the system meets the desired business outcomes and requirements.
• Assist in the schedule of UAT, ensuring that the UAT environment and data is ready for testing.
• Drive performance expectations with direct reports though metrics and observed behavior that delivers results with a customer first mindset.
• Continuously identifies opportunities for improvement across our processes and leads resulting change disciplines in conjunction with other stakeholders.
• Operate with a strong risk management mindset that understands the company’s tolerances and guides tradeoff discussions with the team(s) and organizational leadership.
• Build cross-organizational relationships that develop broader end-to-end improvement opportunities for the company and our customers.

Experience and Education Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree required, preferably in an insurance or business-related field; combination of education and experience will be considered in lieu of degree.
• Minimum of 7 years’ experience in Life and Annuity Service Operations
• Minimum of 5 years of software quality assurance or user acceptance testing experience.
• Experience and knowledge of Windows Operating System, Microsoft Office, Teams, ServiceNow, Jira, SharePoint, Confluence.

Knowledge, Skills & Abilities

• Knowledge and/or experience with financial institution operations related to assigned platform capabilities and how it impacts the business.
• Ability to lead while also serving as an individual contributor for areas of responsibility.
• Ability to relate business needs to system capabilities and to fully understand the role of the systems and the impacts on the business.
• Strong analytical, troubleshooting, and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities and perform strategic decision-making.
• Ability to analyze problems and review multiple alternate solutions including analysis of advantages and disadvantages as well as identify potential risks and remediations.
• Strong attention to detail and accuracy, policy compliance and documentation.
• Effective written and verbal communication with all levels of internal teams and/or e