Senior Operational Resilience & Recovery Specialist, UKPI (12-month contract)

Vanguard; Manchester; Hybrid; GBP 65,000 - 90,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid working 3 days in office (Tue-W

In-office collaboration & learning

Job summary

Vanguard UKPI is seeking a senior professional to lead the delivery of Business Continuity, Operational Resilience and Incident Management across the UKPI platform. You will collaborate with business, technology and external providers to strengthen preparedness, scenario testing and recovery capabilities.

The role focuses on governance, risk alignment and continuous improvement to safeguard client outcomes and meet regulatory expectations in a hybrid UK environment.

Qualifications

• Undergraduate degree or equivalent combination of training and experience.
• Professional accreditation such as CBCI, CBCP, MBCI, or MBCP is preferred.
• Experience within financial services, asset management, operations, risk, resilience, oversight, or another regulated environment.
• Experience supporting operational resilience or business continuity programmes, incident management, operational risk, issue resolution, or service disruption processes.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with an ability to tailor messages to different audiences.

Responsibilities

• Lead and maintain UKPI's Operational Resilience framework, including IBS identification and mapping, impact tolerance reviews, vulnerability assessments, dependency analysis and resilience governance.
• Lead the Business Continuity Management lifecycle, including BIAs, recovery strategy development, business continuity planning, testing and governance.
• Coordinate resilience testing, recovery exercises and scenario-based simulations to validate response and drive improvement.
• Identify, assess and support remediation of resilience vulnerabilities, risks and dependencies across business, technology and third-party services.
• Ensure alignment with regulatory requirements, industry standards and internal frameworks.
• Provide advisory support across UKPI, strengthening preparedness and recovery capabilities.
• Support management of operational incidents and service disruptions, including stakeholder coordination and communications.
• Facilitate post-incident reviews, lessons learned and remediation activities.
• Produce resilience, incident and governance reporting and metrics.

Skills

Operational Resilience

Business Continuity

Incident Management & Coordination

Stakeholder Management

Governance & Reporting

Communication & Influencing

Analytical & Problem-Solving Skills

Continuous Improvement

Regulatory & Risk Awareness

Collaboration & Relationship Mgmt

Education

Undergraduate degree or equivalent

CBCI/CBCP/MBCI/MBCP accreditation preferred

Tools

Power Platform

SharePoint

Power BI

SQL

Job description

As part of the UKPI Resilience & Recovery team, you will lead the delivery of Business Continuity, Operational Resilience and Incident Management activities across the UKPI platform, ensuring Vanguard can remain within tolerance for disruption and continue to deliver important business services to clients during periods of operational stress. You will provide leadership across resilience planning, scenario testing, recovery preparedness and incident management, helping the business build, exercise and continuously improve its response and recovery capabilities. Working closely with business, technology and third‑party stakeholders, you will drive resilience governance, oversee business continuity and recovery planning, support resilience risk assessments, and coordinate lessons learned from incidents and exercises. Your role will be instrumental in enhancing UKPI's ability to anticipate, withstand, respond to and recover from disruption while safeguarding client outcomes and meeting regulatory expectations. This is a highly collaborative role, partnering with teams across Oversight, Client Services, Product, Technology, Delivery, Risk, Compliance, Legal and external providers to support continuous improvement and operational resilience across UKPI.

As part of the UKPI Resilience & Recovery team, you will lead the delivery of Business Continuity, Operational Resilience and Incident Management activities across the UKPI platform, ensuring Vanguard can remain within tolerance for disruption and continue to deliver important business services to clients during periods of operational stress. You will provide leadership across resilience planning, scenario testing, recovery preparedness and incident management, helping the business build, exercise and continuously improve its response and recovery capabilities.

Duties And Responsibilities

• Lead and maintain UKPI's Operational Resilience framework, including Important Business Service (IBS) identification and mapping, impact tolerance reviews, vulnerability assessments, dependency analysis and resilience governance.
• Lead the Business Continuity Management lifecycle, including Business Impact Analyses (BIAs), recovery strategy development, business continuity planning, testing and programme governance.
• Coordinate and facilitate resilience testing, recovery exercises and scenario-based simulations to validate response and recovery capabilities and drive continuous improvement.
• Identify, assess and support the remediation of resilience vulnerabilities, risks and dependencies across business, technology and third‑party services.
• Ensure alignment with relevant regulatory requirements, industry standards and internal resilience and continuity frameworks.
• Provide operational resilience and business continuity advisory support across UKPI, supporting business areas in strengthening preparedness and recovery capabilities.
• Support the management of operational incidents and service disruptions, including stakeholder coordination, communications and escalation activities as required.
• Facilitate post‑incident reviews, lessons learned and remediation activities to strengthen resilience and reduce future risk.
• Produce resilience, incident and governance reporting, management information and metrics to support oversight and decision‑making.
• Support awareness, training and engagement activities to embed resilience, business continuity and incident management practices across the organisation.
• Identify opportunities to enhance operational resilience, recovery capabilities and client outcomes through analysis, continuous improvement and industry best practice.

Key Skills & Capabilities

• Operational Resilience
• Business Continuity
• Incident Management & Coordination
• Stakeholder Management
• Governance & Reporting
• Communication & Influencing
• Analytical & Problem‑Solving Skills
• Continuous Improvement
• Regulatory & Risk Awareness
• Collaboration & Relationship Management

What It Takes

• Undergraduate degree or equivalent combination of training and experience.
• Professional accreditation such as CBCI, CBCP, MBCI, or MBCP is preferred.
• Experience within financial services, asset management, operations, risk, resilience, oversight, or another regulated environment.
• Experience supporting operational resilience or business continuity programmes, incident management, operational risk, issue resolution, or service disruption processes.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with an ability to tailor messages to different audiences.
• Strong organisational skills and the ability to manage multiple priorities in a changing environment.
• Experience analysing issues, identifying trends, and driving practical improvements.
• Experience producing reporting, governance materials, management information, and process documentation.
• Strong collaboration skills and confidence working with business, technology, and external stakeholders.
• Ability to work independently, take initiative, and adapt to evolving priorities.
• Experience with Microsoft Power Platform, SharePoint, Power BI, SQL, or similar reporting tools would be advantageous.

Special Factors

• Vanguard is not offering visa sponsorship for this position.
• This is a hybrid position and would require you to work in the office 3 days per week (Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday).
• Please note that we review applications on a rolling basis and may close this role early if there is a high level of interest. To avoid missing out, we recommend applying as soon as possible.

How We Work

Vanguard has implemented a hybrid working model for the majority of our crew members, designed to capture the benefits of enhanced flexibility while enabling in‑person learning, collaboration, and connection. We believe our mission‑driven and highly collaborative culture is a critical enabler to support long‑term client outcomes and enrich the employee experience.