UAT and Production Validation Manager, Merchant Services Product

About this Role
Wells Fargo is seeking a Senior Lead Digital Product Manager to serve as the UAT and Production Validation Manager, leading an established organization responsible for two distinct but complementary capabilities: User Acceptance Testing (UAT) and Production Validation.
This leader will be responsible for assessing, transforming, and scaling the UAT and Production Validation functions while ensuring strong ongoing execution. The role will evaluate the current organization, including responsibilities, skills, capacity, processes, tooling, governance, documentation, and coverage, and establish a future-state operating model aligned to evolving business priorities, delivery demand, complexity, and risk.
The leader will define and implement clear operating frameworks for both capabilities, including roles and responsibilities, capacity and resource models, intake and prioritization, governance, standards, engagement expectations, metrics, escalation paths, and controls. They will drive adoption across Product, Technology, Operations, Risk, and other partners while establishing clear accountability for when and how UAT and Production Validation are engaged.
While operating within an integrated model, the two disciplines will maintain distinct objectives:

• User Acceptance Testing (UAT): Validate prior to production that solutions meet business requirements, intended user and merchant experiences, and critical end-to-end business processes.
• Production Validation: Validate after deployment that critical functionality and business processes operate as intended in the production environment, with clear identification and escalation of unexpected behavior or business impacts.

Automation will be a key component of the strategy. This leader will establish and advance a risk- and value-based test automation approach, identifying opportunities to improve coverage, capacity, repeatability, efficiency, and scalability while maintaining business-driven testing where judgment and the user or merchant perspective remain essential.
Learn more about the career areas and lines of business at wellsfargojobs.com .
In this role, you will:

• Assess and transform the existing UAT and Production Validation organization, establishing a scalable future-state operating model, organizational structure, governance framework, capacity model, standards, processes, and performance measures.
• Define clear ownership, responsibilities, engagement points, intake and prioritization processes, escalation paths, controls, and expectations across Product, Technology, Operations, Risk, and business partners.
• Lead the UAT strategy and execution, ensuring appropriate testing of business requirements, user and merchant experiences, and critical end-to-end processes before production implementation.
• Establish testing scope, scenarios, environments, data requirements, coverage, dependencies, entry and exit criteria, defect management, and readiness reporting based on business impact, complexity, and risk.
• Lead a distinct Production Validation strategy, ensuring critical functionality and business processes are appropriately validated following deployment and that issues are quickly identified, escalated, and addressed.
• Leverage UAT and Production Validation results to strengthen upstream testing, release readiness, controls, and broader delivery practices.
• Define and advance the test automation strategy, prioritizing automation based on risk, business value, repeatability, testing frequency, scalability, and return while establishing the appropriate balance between automated and manual validation.
• Establish meaningful metrics across capacity, quality, coverage, defects, readiness, execution, automation effectiveness, and business outcomes to drive decision-making and continuous improvement.
• Lead and develop a high-performing organization with differentiated UAT and Production Validation expertise, aligning people and financial resources to business priorities and delivery demand.
• Build strong partnerships and influence senior leaders across Product, Technology, Operations, Risk, and other functions to manage dependencies, resolve issues, and support moderate- to high-risk business and digital initiatives.
• Foster a culture of accountability, disciplined execution, talent development, continuous improvement, and measurable business outcomes.

Required Qualifications:

• 7+ years of digital product management or leadership experience, or equivalent demonstrated through one or a combination of the following: work experience, training, military experience, education
• 3+ years of management or leadership experience

Desired Qualifications:

• Demonstrated experience building, transforming, or significantly maturing UAT, Production Validation, testing, or comparable quality functions, including assessing current-state capabilities and implementing future-state operating models.
• Experience establishing organizational structures, governance, capacity models, roles and responsibilities, engagement models, processes, standards, controls, documentation, and performance measures.
• Strong knowledge of UAT and Production Validation, including their distinct objectives, ownership models, execution requirements, and relationship to unit, system/integration, point-to-point, end-to-end, and regression testing.
• Extensive knowledge of Jira supporting requirements traceability, testing workflows, execution, defect management, capacity management, reporting, and metrics.
• Demonstrated experience defining and implementing test automation strategies, including evaluating opportunities based on business value, risk, frequency, repeatability, and scalability.
• Experience translating business requirements and intended user or merchant experiences into effective testing scenarios, validation strategies, and readiness criteria.
• Experience leading testing and validation across multiple concurrent, complex, and higher-risk initiatives.
• Strong experience establishing and using quality, execution, defect, coverage, readiness, capacity, automation, and Production Validation metrics to drive decisions and continuous improvement.
• Strong risk management and judgment, with the ability to identify material issues, articulate business impact, and influence implementation, escalation, and remediation decisions.
• Proven ability to influence senior leaders and build strong partnerships across Product, Technology, Operations, Risk, and business functions.
• Demonstrated people leadership experience building high-performing teams and establishing scalable, repeatable, and well-documented operating practices.

Posting Locations:

• 550 South Tryon Street - Charlotte, North Carolina, 28202
• 800 South Jordan Creek Parkway - West Des Moines, Iowa, 50266
• 401 Las Colinas Blvd W Building A - Irving, Texas, 75039

Job Expectations:

• Ability to work at one of the locations in this job posting.
• Ability to travel up to 10% of the time.
• Flexibility to support global teams across time zones.
• This position is not eligible for Visa Sponsorship.
• This position does not offer relocation assistance.
• This position currently offers a hybrid work schedule.
• Specific compliance policies may apply regarding outside activities and/or personal investing; affected employees will be expected to provide information to the Wells Fargo Personal Account Dealing Team and abide by applicable policy requirements if hired. Information will be shared about expectations during the recruitment process.

Posting End Date:
26 Oct 2026
*Job posting may come down early due to volume of applicants.
We Value Equal Opportunity
Wells Fargo is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, status as a protected veteran, or any other legally protected characteristic.
Employees support our focus on building strong customer relationships balanced with a strong risk mitigating and compliance-driven culture which firmly establishes those disciplines as critical to the success of our customers and company. They are accountable for execution of all applicable risk programs (Credit, Market, Financial Crimes, Operational, Regulatory Compliance), which includes effectively following and adhering to applicable Wells Fargo policies and procedures, appropriately fulfilling risk and compliance obligations, timely and effective escalation and remediation of issues, and making sound risk decisions. There is emphasis on proactive monitoring, governance, risk identification and escalation, as well as making sound risk decisions commensurate with the business unit's risk appetite and all risk and compliance program requirements.
Candidates applying to job openings posted in Canada: Applications for employment are encouraged from all qualified candidates, including women, persons with disabilities, aboriginal peoples and visible minorities. Accommodation for applicants with disabilities is available upon request in connection with the recruitment process.
Applicants with Disabilities
To request a medical accommodation during the application or interview process, visit Disability Inclusion at Wells Fargo .
Drug and Alcohol Policy
Wells Fargo maintains a drug free workplace. Please see our Drug and Alcohol Policy to learn more.
Wells Fargo Recruitment and Hiring Requirements:
a. Third-Party recordings are prohibited unless authorized by Wells Fargo.
b. Wells Fargo requires you to directly represent your own experiences during the recruiting and hiring process.
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