Disaster Recovery Program Manager

Job Title: Disaster Recovery Program Manager

Work mode: Hybrid

Number of days a week worked in the office: 2 with potential weekend support needed when we have critical incidents or any change planned (tentative)

Contract duration: 3 months (extendable to 1 year or even more)

Location: UK Warwick

Job Description

Disaster Recovery Program Manager will lead the development, governance, and execution of one of UK’s critical infrastructure Disaster Recovery (DR) programme, ensuring the organisation can effectively prepare for, withstand, and recover from events that threaten critical network, technology, and operational services in a 24x7 environment. The role brings together cross‑functional teams to drive strategic initiatives that enhance operational resilience, maintain regulatory compliance, and safeguard customer trust by balancing risk, cost, and recovery objectives.

Essential Duties And Responsibilities At All Levels

• Disaster Recovery Program Leadership & Governance
• Align DR initiatives with strategic vision, long‑range plan (LRP), budgets and organisational risk posture.
• Develop and maintain the cross‑organisational DR roadmap, including timelines, milestones, readiness targets, testing cycles, and capital/operating budgets.
• Translate enterprise risks, regulatory needs and operational priorities into actionable DR initiatives and recovery strategies.
• Establish and enforce governance frameworks (roles & responsibilities, approvals & escalation, lifecycle phases, risk mitigation).
• Manage DR programmes/projects across a matrixed organisation, including scope, schedule, budget, resources, risk and communication.
• Integrate DR planning with Major Incident Management, Business Continuity, Cybersecurity, Network Operations, Application and Infrastructure teams.
• Build and maintain DR standards, methodologies, playbooks and execution practices.
• Lead tabletop exercises, functional tests and full‑scale recovery exercises and track findings and remediation.
• Provide executive‑level reporting on readiness, risks, test outcomes, gaps and improvements.

Program Analysis, Discovery & Continuous Improvement

Identify opportunities to strengthen preparedness by assessing technology resilience, operational processes, organisational capabilities and lessons learned.

Support adaptive programme management to promote continuous learning and improvement.

Partner with business and technical teams to develop, analyse and maintain metrics, data sets and models supporting DR planning and readiness assessments.

Analyse risk trends and recovery performance to guide investment and leadership decisions.

Evaluate new technologies, architectures and initiatives for DR and resiliency impact.

Cross‑Functional Collaboration & Advisory Support

Build collaborative relationships across Network Operations, Application Technology, Engineering, Security, Compliance, Consumer and executive teams.

Collaborate on organisation‑wide training programmes for Disaster Recovery and Incident Response.

Serve as a trusted advisor on DR readiness, risk posture and response capabilities.

Vendor, Partner & Resource Management

Manage DR‑related vendor relationships, including procurement, contracts, performance evaluation and third‑party resiliency services.

Ensure vendor solutions align with recovery objectives, regulatory obligations and operational requirements.

Coordinate with state and federal agencies during regional disasters.

Validate DR business cases and financial assumptions to ensure effective use of capital and operating budgets.

Support staffing and resource planning, prioritising and managing dependencies.

Monitor budgets, variances and financial risks for DR initiatives.

Evaluate completed DR initiatives for performance against scope, schedule, budget and strategic goals.

Preferred Qualifications

• Minimum of 15 years of progressively responsible relevant experience in Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery, Project/Program Management, Engineering, and/or Information Security/Technology, or a related field.
• Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity certifications.
• Experience with disaster recovery testing, incident response or compliance environments.
• UK public sector critical infrastructure experience.

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