Senior Associate, Strategic Partnerships

Location Designation: Hybrid - 3 days per week

Role Overview:

The Strategic Partnerships Senior Associate plays a key role in optimizing strategic vendor and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) relationships that enable Group Benefit Solutions (GBS) operations at scale. This position combines operational execution, vendor governance, process engineering, and cross-functional collaboration to drive service excellence, cost efficiency, and transformation initiatives.

This role is ideal for a highly analytical, solutions-oriented professional who thrives in a matrixed environment and is motivated by improving end-to-end operational performance through strong partnership management.

What You’ll Do:

Strategic Partner Execution & Governance

• Manage day-to-day execution of strategic partner engagements, ensuring delivery aligns with SLAs, contractual commitments, and business objectives.
• Support governance of MSAs, SOWs, and Change Orders, preparing performance insights and analysis to inform renewals and commercial discussions.
• Maintain strong working relationships with vendor counterparts to ensure operational alignment and service continuity.

Performance, Risk & Issue Management

• Track and analyze partner performance across SLAs, productivity, and quality metrics; translate insights into actionable improvements.
• Identify, escalate, and help resolve service delivery issues to minimize operational disruption and protect stakeholder experience.
• Coordinate vendor-related incident response activities, ensuring documentation, follow-up, and accountability.

BPO Strategy & Operational Optimization

• Evaluate operational processes for outsourcing viability, assessing scalability, complexity, risk, and skill requirements.
• Contribute to business case development, including cost-benefit and ROI analysis, in partnership with Operations and Finance.
• Support transformation initiatives, pilots, and service transitions to improve efficiency, quality, and speed-to-implementation.

Cross-Functional Collaboration & Enablement

• Partner with GBS Operations, SS&P, IT, Risk, Privacy, Quality, and Vendor Management teams to drive aligned execution.
• Develop and maintain dashboards, scorecards, and intake processes that enhance transparency, governance, and decision-making.
• Support onboarding, knowledge transfer, and continuity across partner engagements.

What You’ll Bring:

Required Skills:

• Experience managing or supporting third-party/vendor service relationships in an operations, shared services, or BPO environment.
• Strong analytical skills with the ability to interpret operational data, identify trends, and drive performance improvements.
• Experience applying process engineering principles to analyze end-to-end workflows and implement measurable improvements.
• Ability to work effectively in a matrixed organization, influencing stakeholders across business and functional teams.
• Proven problem-solving skills and ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced environment.

Preferred Skills:

• Experience with large global service providers supporting insurance, financial services, or enterprise operations.
• Familiarity with contract structures (MSAs, SOWs) and vendor performance governance frameworks.
• Exposure to operational transformation initiatives, automation, or AI-enabled service delivery.
• Experience with data visualization or reporting tools (e.g., Power BI, Tableau, advanced Excel).

Pay Transparency

Salary Range: $90,000-$128,500

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.

Our Benefits

We provide a full package of benefits for employees – and have unique offerings for a modern workforce, including leave programs, adoption assistance, and student loan repayment programs. Based on feedback from our employees, we continue to refine and add benefits to our offering, so that you can flourish both inside and outside of work. Click here to discover more about our comprehensive benefit options or visit our NYL Benefits Site.

Our Commitment to Inclusion
At New York Life, fostering an inclusive workplace is fundamental to who we are and how we serve our communities. We have a longstanding commitment to creating an environment where individuals can contribute their best and succeed together. This foundation is rooted in our core values of humanity and integrity, ensuring that every employee feels valued and supported. By embracing a broad range of perspectives and experiences, we achieve greater success and fulfill our promise of providing financial security and peace of mind to families across all communities. Click here to learn more about New York Life’s leadership in this space.

Recognized as one of Fortune’s World’s Most Admired Companies, New York Life is committed to improving local communities through a culture of employee giving and volunteerism, supported by the Foundation. We're proud that due to our mutuality, we operate in the best interests of our policy owners. To learn more about career opportunities at New York Life, please visit the Careers page of www.NewYorkLife.com.

Visit our LinkedIn to see how our employees and agents are leading the industry and impacting communities.

Visit our Newsroom to learn more about how our company is constantly evolving to meet our clients' and employees’ needs.

Job Requisition ID: 93447