Crisis & Operational Resilience Lead

Crisis & Operational Resilience Lead - £750-£800 per day - Inside IR35 - Remote with occasional site attendance - 6 months initial contract.

We are recruiting for an experienced Crisis & Operational Resilience Lead to support a major UK organisation in establishing an integrated Enterprise IT Crisis Management capability.This is a predominantly greenfield opportunity, requiring someone who has proven experience designing and establishing enterprise operating models, governance frameworks and clear accountability structures.

The successful candidate will bring together Business Continuity, Crisis Management, Cyber Crisis Management and Technical Recovery into a cohesive, repeatable and scalable operating model.

This is not an operational incident management position. We are looking for someone who can design the capability, define how the different disciplines interact and establish the governance, responsibilities and processes required to manage future disruption scenarios effectively.

Key Responsibilities -

• Lead the design and development of an end-to-end Enterprise IT Crisis Management operating model.
• Define responsibilities, accountability boundaries and interaction points across Business Continuity, Crisis Management, Cyber Crisis Management and Technical Recovery.
• Develop comprehensive RACI models, governance frameworks, escalation routes and decision-making structures.
• Conduct a current-state assessment, identifying capability gaps, dependencies and opportunities for improvement.
• Engage senior stakeholders across Enterprise IT, Cyber Security, Recovery & Resilience, suppliers and federated IT teams.
• Lead workshops to establish agreement on future-state processes, ownership and ways of working.
• Provide direction to a dedicated Business Analyst supporting the initiative.
• Establish readiness measures, KPIs and approaches to assurance, exercising and testing.
• Develop a capability roadmap supporting implementation, maturity and continuous improvement.
• Present recommendations and proposed operating arrangements to senior leadership for approval.

Essential Experience -

• Proven experience designing and establishing enterprise operating models, including governance frameworks, RACI matrices and clearly defined accountability structures.
• Strong background in at least one of the following disciplines: Crisis Management, Operational Resilience or Business Continuity.
• Experience developing organisational capabilities, ideally within complex, multi-stakeholder environments.
• Demonstrable ability to bring together different business and technical disciplines to establish common processes and ways of working.
• Excellent stakeholder engagement, workshop facilitation and senior-level communication skills.
• Ability to translate complex organisational requirements into practical, structured and deliverable operating models.
• Must be eligible to obtain UK Security Check (SC) clearance.

Highly Desirable -

• Previous greenfield experience establishing a Crisis Management, Operational Resilience or Business Continuity capability from the ground up. This will be particularly advantageous.
• First-hand experience supporting or managing major crisis incidents, providing practical insight into how crisis management arrangements operate during real-world disruption.
• Experience working within large, complex or highly regulated organisations.
• Knowledge of ISO 22301 and relevant operational resilience frameworks.
• Understanding of Cyber Crisis Management, Disaster Recovery and Technical Recovery.
• Experience working with outsourced service providers and federated IT functions.

The Opportunity -

This role offers the opportunity to shape a critical enterprise capability from its foundations, establishing the structures, governance and operating arrangements that will underpin how the organisation prepares for and responds to future disruption.

We are particularly interested in candidates who can demonstrate tangible examples of operating models they have personally designed and implemented, rather than those whose experience is primarily focused on managing existing Business Continuity processes or responding to live incidents.

Candidates must be eligible to obtain SC clearance. Existing clearance is advantageous but not essential.