Sr. Manager, Technical UAT & Integration Test Manager, Core & Digital Banking

Position Overview

The Sr. Manager, Technical UAT & Integration Test Manager, Core & Digital Banking owns testing across a bank's whole modernization program: one strategy, one calendar, one defect process and one quality picture, across the bank's own teams and every vendor.

You run testing the way a technical program manager runs a program. When a critical project milestone depends on a result, or a vendor disputes critical issues, you get hands-on to check it yourself in the data, the API, or the test library. This engagement is a community bank moving to an API-first core and launching new digital banking and servicing for its retail and small-business customers, with new payment and fraud integrations around them. The bank's staff and vendors execute the test scripts; you plan, coordinate, track and report, and personally run the checks that settle a disagreement. This is a technical leadership role, not QA coordination.

What you'll do:

• Write one test strategy for every testing effort on the program: core configuration, digital banking and servicing, payments and integrations. It will cover the phases, the owner of each, environments. and test data.

• Keep one master test calendar tied to the program plan's milestones and critical path, through every mock conversion, release and go-live.

• Set the test governance and quality gates: one severity model, the triage cadence, vendor response tracking, and escalation into the program's RAID log.

• Build one inventory of test scenarios and cases from vendor-supplied and bank-written scripts, find the coverage gaps, and work with leadership to close all the gaps.

• Run one defect process across every workstream and vendor in the bank's case management tool. Chair the weekly triage, and track aging by vendor and severity, and every deferred and rejected item.

• Publish a weekly test dashboard by workstream, including execution progress, pass rate, open defects by severity and age, and blocked tests, which feeds into the program's executive status report.

• Before each mock conversion, release and go-live, you’ll provide program and executive leadership a go/no-go recommendation, and a risk readout grounded in the test evidence.

• You’ll manage test dependencies like a program: environment builds, test data, vendor code drops, interface readiness and mock dates.

• You’ll get hands on to verify critical and/or disputed results yourself:

  • core product, parameter and general-ledger configuration, through the core's APIs and data, not only on screen

  • retail and small-business digital banking: enrollment, sign-in and MFA, business users, entitlements and approvals, transfers, bill pay, alerts and servicing

  • payments: ACH files and returns, domestic wires, positive pay and bill pay

  • integrations, such as fraud and AML monitoring and Fed routing

• Review the test definitions the bank and its vendors run, and tighten any that would let a defect through.

• When there isn't time to run every test, prioritize by business risk and have the bank's management review the residual risk of anything not tested.

What you bring:

• Retail and small-business digital banking: testing lead on at least one launch or migration of online and mobile banking for both retail and small-business customers, including business users, entitlements and approvals.

• Core conversion experience: testing lead on at least one bank core conversion, through mock conversions to go-live. You know how mock dates and converted data shape testing in every channel.

• 10+ years in testing, including 5 or more leading test programs for banks or banking technology providers.

• Technical floor: current, hands-on skill in SQL against core banking data, API testing from OpenAPI specifications in Postman or a similar tool, and test definitions and configuration read and written in YAML or JSON.

• Testing coordinated across several vendors at once, with the plan, dependencies and critical path owned by you.

• Go/no-go recommendations and weekly reporting that bank executives act on, including at least one "no-go" or "go with conditions" you called.

Strong candidates will also have experience with:

• An API-first, cloud-native core, such as Nymbus, Thought Machine, Mambu, or Finxact.

• A digital banking and servicing platform, such as Q2, Alkami, Apiture, Savana, Bankjoy, Backbase, Narmi, Jack Henry Banno or Fiserv.

• Payments testing: Nacha files and returns, Fedwire ISO 20022 messages, positive pay and bill pay.

• Fraud and AML monitoring integrations.

• Community bank experience, where the bank's testers also run its daily operations.

• Time as a technical project or program manager; PMP or ISTQB Test Manager certification.

What we look for in how you work:

• Ownership and accountability. You own the program's quality picture, not just the test calendar. When a vendor misses a code drop, you bring the impact and two options to the program meeting, not just the news.

• Reliability and follow-through. Your dashboard goes out on the same day every week, its numbers tie to the defect tool, and nobody learns about a slipped gate from someone else.

• Curiosity and learning agility. You learn a new core's data model and a vendor's API from their documentation in weeks, and you read the specification before you ask.

• Bias for action. With 70% of the information, you publish the calendar and the criteria and adjust them as you learn, rather than waiting for a perfect plan.

• Judgment and presence. You can tell a bank's executives that a release isn't ready, show the evidence, and recommend what to do next — and you can tell a real blocker from one that only sounds urgent.

About Ignite Banking

Since 2011, Ignite Banking has been a firm of senior practitioners working exclusively for banks, credit unions and fintechs. We plan, design, build and deliver the programs institutions stake their roadmaps on: commercial treasury, digital banking, core and platform modernization, payments, M&A technology integration and financial crimes. We are practitioners, not a pyramid. Our teams are small, experienced, and accountable for finishing the work.

How we work

• Remote within the United States, with paid travel of 10–25% for kickoffs, working sessions, mock conversions and cutovers.

• Full-time W-2 employment, with benefits. Some specialist roles are hourly.

• You work inside the client's teams and tools, alongside the bank's staff and its vendors.

• Unlike at a large consultancy, the work you do shapes every engagement.

Who we hire

• Every role at Ignite hires for four traits: ownership and accountability, reliability and follow-through, curiosity and learning agility, and a bias for action.

Background checks

• Offers are contingent on a background check. Some clients also require drug testing and seven years of employment verification before you start on their work.

Equal opportunity

• Ignite Banking is an equal opportunity employer. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status or any other protected characteristic.