Operational Resilience Specialist

Role: Operational Resilience Specialist

Duration: 12 Months
Location: Leh, UT OR Santa Clara, CA
Work Arrangement: Primarily Onsite
Employment Type: Contract

Role Overview

Client is seeking an experienced Operational Resilience Specialist to support and drive its enterprise business continuity, disaster recovery, and operational resilience program.

The individual will be responsible for the execution and coordination of Business Impact Assessments (BIAs), Technical Impact Assessments (TIAs), Business Continuity Plans (BCPs), Disaster Recovery Plans (DRPs), backup/recovery readiness, resilience testing, risk and issue tracking, and remediation activities.

The ideal candidate will combine strong Business Continuity / Disaster Recovery / Operational Resilience expertise with excellent program coordination, stakeholder management, documentation, and data-management skills.

Key Responsibilities

Business Impact & Resilience Assessments

• Partner with business, system, application, and technology owners to conduct Business Impact Assessments (BIAs) and Technical Impact Assessments (TIAs).
• Identify and document critical business processes, technology dependencies, recovery priorities, and recovery requirements.
• Establish and maintain RTOs, RPOs, critical dependencies, and resilience risk baselines.
• Review assessment data for gaps, inconsistencies, and completeness.
• Follow up with stakeholders to resolve outstanding assessment items.

Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery

• Facilitate the development, review, maintenance, and quality assurance of Business Continuity Plans (BCPs).
• Facilitate development, review, testing, and maintenance of Disaster Recovery Plans (DRPs) and recovery procedures.
• Ensure plans remain current as applications, infrastructure, business processes, and organizational requirements change.
• Validate recovery strategies and dependencies with relevant technology and business stakeholders.
• Coordinate periodic plan reviews and ensure identified gaps are addressed.

Backup & Recovery Readiness

• Work closely with IT Operations, infrastructure, application, and system teams to validate:
• Backup coverage
• Backup retention
• Restore procedures
• Recovery dependencies
• Recovery validation
• RTO/RPO alignment
• Identify backup and recovery gaps and coordinate remediation activities.
• Support documentation and validation of recovery procedures.

Risk, Issue & Remediation Management

• Manage and track Corrective and Preventive Actions (CAPA) resulting from incidents, audits, assessments, DR tests, and resilience exercises.
• Track risks, issues, action items, owners, due dates, and remediation status.
• Proactively follow up with action owners to drive items to closure.
• Escalate overdue or high-risk items as appropriate.
• Maintain accurate, audit-ready remediation records.

Resilience Exercises & Testing

• Coordinate disaster recovery tests, tabletop exercises, simulations, and other resilience exercises.
• Manage exercise schedules, logistics, participant coordination, documentation, and follow-up.
• Capture test results, lessons learned, gaps, and improvement opportunities.
• Coordinate after-action activities and track remediation items through closure.

Governance, Tools & Reporting

• Maintain accurate information within GRC, BCM, operational resilience, risk, or governance platforms.
• Perform regular data-quality and completeness reviews.
• Maintain trackers, dashboards, reports, and management-level reporting.
• Provide leadership with accurate visibility into resilience readiness, risks, gaps, and remediation status.
• Support audit, compliance, and regulatory requirements related to business continuity and disaster recovery.

Program Coordination & Continuous Improvement

• Coordinate multiple resilience workstreams, timelines, stakeholders, and deliverables.
• Work cross-functionally with business, IT, security, infrastructure, facilities, risk, and third-party partners.
• Maintain standardized templates, procedures, trackers, and operating processes.
• Identify opportunities to improve resilience processes, reporting, documentation, and overall program execution.

Required Qualifications

• 7+ years of overall professional experience.
• At least 4 5 years of experience in Business Continuity, Disaster Recovery, Operational Resilience, IT Risk, or related areas.
• Hands-on experience with BIA and/or TIA processes.
• Experience developing, reviewing, maintaining, or testing BCPs and DRPs.
• Strong understanding of:
• RTO / RPO
• Recovery strategies
• Business and technology dependencies
• Disaster recovery testing
• Backup and restore processes
• Recovery procedures
• Experience with risk, issue, CAPA, remediation, or audit finding tracking.
• Experience coordinating resilience exercises, tabletop exercises, or DR tests.
• Strong program coordination skills with the ability to manage multiple workstreams and stakeholders.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Strong documentation, analytical, and data-management skills.
• Experience with GRC/BCM/resilience platforms or reporting tools.
• Strong proficiency with Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, Word, or similar tools.
• Ability to work independently and drive deliverables through completion.

Preferred Skills

• Experience supporting an enterprise-wide Operational Resilience or Business Continuity program.
• Experience working with IT Operations, infrastructure, security, application teams, facilities, and third-party providers.
• Knowledge of regulatory, audit, and compliance expectations related to resilience and recovery.
• Experience with platforms such as ServiceNow GRC, Archer, MetricStream, Fusion Framework, or similar tools.
• Experience with after-action reviews and continuous improvement initiatives.
• Relevant certifications such as CBCP, MBCI, CBCI, CRISC, CISA, or similar are a plus.