Enterprise Test Governance Lead - Finance & Risk

Location: New York

Location:
New York, NY - Hybrid
Duration: 06+ months contract with possible extension

Summary:
This role leads the centralized E2E Testing Control Tower across Finance, Risk, and Compliance functions, providing end-to-end accountability for testing governance, dependency orchestration, and cross-program execution. The position delivers lifecycle oversight spanning project intake, prioritization, test planning, environment coordination, data readiness, and release execution.

The role drives the standardization of testing practices, enforces SSSDLC-aligned documentation and centralized artifact management, and enhances overall testing quality, consistency, and predictability. Responsibilities include governing structured intake and prioritization processes, ensuring assignment of E2E Testing Managers, optimizing QA resource allocation, and partnering with stakeholders to define and appropriately sequence QA and UAT timelines.

The role ensures comprehensive test coverage, regression readiness, milestone adherence, and go-live preparedness, while proactively managing cross-project dependencies, risks, resource constraints, and environment availability. Working closely with Project Managers, QA/UAT teams, technology partners, and business stakeholders, the role enforces testing entry and exit criteria, secures required signoffs, and aligns execution outcomes with program objectives.

Additionally, the role delivers executive-level insights through standardized KPI-driven reporting, providing transparency into execution progress, defect trends, risks, dependencies, and capacity considerations. The position also drives continuous improvement through process optimization, automation adoption, governance enhancements, and incorporation of lessons learned from testing and post-implementation activities.

Primary Responsibilities

• Evaluate and intake all candidate projects, ensuring clear scope, urgency, dependencies, business impact, and alignment to intake standards.
• Govern use of a centralized intake channel and maintain a transparent project backlog across in-scope initiatives.
• Identify and assign E2E Testing Managers and ensure effective QA resource allocation across projects.
• Apply standardized prioritization criteria and continuously balance demand against capacity across the portfolio.
• Coordinate with stakeholders to facilitate proper sequencing and define QA and UAT timelines, ensuring no overlap and completion of regression cycles prior to UAT.
• Govern completeness of test coverage against business requirements and ensure adherence to testing strategies and operating models.
• Monitor milestone adherence across QA, UAT, and go-live phases; track planned vs. actual timelines and proactively flag delays or sequencing risks.
• Identify and manage cross-project dependencies, timeline conflicts, and inter-team handoffs to ensure seamless execution.
• Coordinate test environment setup, testing windows, and shared environment usage across concurrent initiatives, resolving conflicts proactively.
• Ensure timely provisioning of test data and enforce adherence to enhanced data load and validation controls for audit readiness.
• Proactively identify, assess, and escalate risks including timeline slippage, environment constraints, data gaps, and capacity issues.
• Escalate critical issues, sequencing conflicts, and cross-project impacts to senior stakeholders for timely resolution.
• Ensure all BRDs, FRDs, FSDs, and test artifacts are maintained in centralized repositories and drive adoption of SSSDLC-aligned templates.
• Partner with PMs and E2E Testing Managers to govern entry/exit criteria, ensure required signoffs, and assess downstream impacts across projects.
• Capture stakeholder feedback on risks and mitigation plans, incorporating insights into go-live readiness decisions.
• Standardize testing status reporting and deliver executive dashboards with visibility into execution progress, defect metrics, risks, dependencies, and gaps.
• Track adoption of test automation and leverage defect trends and post-go-live insights to drive continuous improvement across testing cycles.

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