Retirement Domain SME-Manager

About the Role

EY is seeking a Retirement Domain SME-Manager to join their Global Delivery Services team. This role is part of the Consulting practice and focuses on supporting clients in the retirement domain.

Key Responsibilities

• Support clients in engagements related to various retirement topics.
• Provide expertise in Defined Benefits Operations, including benefits calculations and reviews for retirement, termination, disability, death, and divorce scenarios.
• Ensure ERISA Compliance for US Retirement Plans, including testing (ADP & ACP Testing) and reporting.
• Demonstrate a deep understanding of in-plan guaranteed income products such as annuities within defined contribution plans.
• Evaluate protected retirement solutions through insurance-wrapped investment vehicles.
• Assist with recordkeeping platform enhancements to support in-plan income features, including income projection tools, guarantee tracking, and participant-level income illustrations.
• Handle money in and loan-related activities, such as check processing, contributions, loan initiation, loan repayments, and re-amortization.
• Manage disbursements/distributions including hardship withdrawals, QDRO, RMD, in-service distributions, and loans.
• Understand business rules for Payout, Qualified/Non-Qualified Plans, Roth Conversion, Roth IRA, Fiduciaries, Defined Contribution, and Defined Benefits/Pension.
• Gain exposure to Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) studies and Public Pensions.
• Understand plan administration, group and account setup, and eligibility.
• Understand Vesting rules and Investment management.
• Possess knowledge of middle and back-office processing, including retirement account origination, servicing, funds payout, and reconciliation.
• Support or lead PMO functions for large-scale retirement transformation programs, including project planning, milestone tracking, risk management, and stakeholder reporting.
• Coordinate across business, technology, and vendor teams to ensure alignment with project timelines, scope, and quality standards in retirement platform implementations or upgrades.
• Create business process maps for future state architecture.
• Develop Work Breakdown Structures (WBS) for overall conversion strategy.
• Perform requirement refinement in multi-vendor engagements.
• Participate in Business Transformation and Modernization programs.
• Conduct Due-Diligence and Assessment projects for transformation roadmaps.
• Gather and elicit requirements, writing BRDs and FSDs.
• Conduct JAD sessions and Workshops for requirement capture.
• Collaborate with Product Owners.
• Define optimal future state operational processes and related product configurations.
• Define scope by providing innovative solutions and challenging client requirements.
• Deliver clearly defined requirement documents with relevant dataflow and process flow diagrams.
• Analyze and extract functional enhancements with the product design development team.
• Provide product consultancy and assist with acceptance criteria gathering.
• Manage service delivery within agreed service levels across multiple blended processes.
• Implement operational governance framework, quality review mechanisms, and communication strategies.
• Design innovative and effective technology solutions.
• Execute data migration projects, ensuring data integrity and security.
• Utilize data analytics to extract insights and drive decision-making.
• Apply data governance principles and best practices.

Requirements & Tech Stack

• Proficiency in technology solution architecture.
• Experience in data migration projects.
• Skilled in data analytics.
• Strong understanding of data governance principles.
• Industry certifications such as ASPPA/LOMA/RPF will be an added advantage.
• Experience with solutions like ALIS, OMNI, Relius, NeoSpin, Vitech, TRAC is preferable.

Qualifications

• Proven ability to coordinate across business, technology, and vendor teams.
• Experience in creating business process maps for future state architecture.
• Experience in creating WBS for overall conversion strategy.
• Experience in requirement refinement process in multi-vendor engagement.
• Experience worked on multiple Business transformation and modernization programs.
• Experience conducted multiple Due-Diligence and Assessment projects as part of Transformation roadmaps.
• Experience in Requirements Gathering, Elicitation – writing BRDs, FSDs.
• Experience conducting JAD sessions and Workshops to capture requirements.
• Experience working closely with Product Owner.
• Ability to work with the client to define the most optimal future state operational process and related product configuration.
• Ability to define scope by providing innovative solutions and challenging all new client requirements and change requests.
• Ability to deliver clearly defined requirement documents with relevant dataflow and process flow diagrams.
• Ability to work closely with product design development team to analyse and extract functional enhancements.
• Ability to provide product consultancy and assist the client with acceptance criteria gathering and support throughout the project life cycle.
• Ability to manage service delivery within the agreed service level across multiple blended processes.
• Ability to implement operational governance framework quality review mechanism, communication strategy.
• Collaborative team player.
• Ability to work closely with stakeholders and technical teams to define requirements and implement effective solutions.