Assistant Vice President - IT Resiliency

Great Eastern; Kuala Lumpur; On-site; MYR 300,000 - 600,000; Full time

Job summary

Great Eastern seeks an AVP of IT Resiliency to drive disaster recovery strategy, governance, and operational readiness across IT services. Lead planning, implementation, and continuous improvement of DR capabilities, aligning with business continuity and regulatory expectations.

You will coordinate DR exercises, work with infrastructure, application, security and business stakeholders, and extend coverage to other IT infrastructure areas as needed.

Qualifications

• Minimum 8 years in leadership in IT Disaster Recovery or Business Continuity management.
• Strong expertise in IT disaster recovery, infrastructure resilience, and business continuity practices.
• Ability to translate business recovery requirements into practical infrastructure recovery strategies (RTO/RPO).
• Experience coordinating cross-functional teams during DR exercises and incident recovery.
• Familiarity with governance, standards, and regulatory frameworks for IT resilience.

Responsibilities

• Lead development and continuous improvement of DR strategy, framework and governance.
• Define DR policies and procedures aligned with enterprise standards and regulations.
• Provide leadership to team members and promote continuous DR process improvements.
• Establish recovery strategies with infrastructure and applications teams for critical systems.
• Develop annual DR plans and coordinate DR exercises including cyber and ransomware scenarios.
• Drive cross-team coordination during DR activities with infra, apps, databases, and security teams.
• Assess and improve recovery capabilities to meet RTO and RPO requirements.
• Monitor DR readiness and report risks and improvement needs to senior management.
• Lead initiatives to enhance recovery automation and resilience architecture.
• Provide SME input on DR for technology projects and major platform implementations.
• Account for business and regulatory compliance risks and mitigations.

Skills

Leadership experience in IT

IT disaster recovery

Business continuity management

Cross-functional coordination

Regulatory compliance

Stakeholder engagement

Enterprise IT infrastructure

Strategic planning

Education

Bachelor's degree in computer science / IT

Diploma in a relevant field

Job description

The AVP of IT Resiliency team is responsible for driving the Great Eastern IT Disaster Recovery strategy, governance, and operational readiness to ensure critical and essential systems and infrastructure can be recovered within defined recovery objectives during a disruption.

This role will lead the planning, implementation, and continuous improvement of disaster recovery capabilities across infrastructure platforms, ensuring alignment with business continuity requirements, regulatory expectations, and enterprise technology standards.

The Lead will work closely with infrastructure, application, security, and business stakeholders to establish resilient recovery strategies, coordinate DR exercises, and strengthen the organization’s ability to respond efficiently to major incidents, including cyber and ransomware scenarios.

Additionally, as a lead, the individual will also provide leadership in other areas of IT Infrastructure department and represent the department as called upon. The individual should also be able to extend his/her coverage to other areas of the department as required.

• Lead the development and continuous improvement of Great Eastern Disaster Recovery (DR) strategy, framework, and governance to ensure business systems and IT services can be recovered within defined recovery objectives during major incidents.
• Define and maintain DR policies, standards, and procedures, ensuring alignment with enterprise architecture, technology platforms, and regulatory expectations.
• Provide leadership, coaching, and direction to team members, and promote continuous improvement in DR processes, procedures, and reporting.
• Establish and review system recovery strategies with infrastructure and application teams, ensuring appropriate recovery methods, recovery sites, and restoration approaches are defined for critical and essential systems.
• Develop and update annual DR plans, and coordinate periodic DR exercises, including scenario-based simulations (e.g., infrastructure failures, cyber incidents, and ransomware scenarios) to validate recovery readiness and operational effectiveness.
• Drive cross-team coordination during DR exercises and recovery activities, working closely with infrastructure applications, database, security, and network teams to ensure successful exercise of recovery procedures.
• Assess and improve recovery capabilities across infrastructure platforms, including backup, data replication, system rebuild, and restoration processes to meet RTO and RPO requirements.
• Monitor and report DR readiness and recovery capabilities to Senior Management and governance forums, highlighting risks, gaps, and improvement initiatives.
• Lead initiatives to enhance recovery automation, operational efficiency, and resilience architecture across IT infrastructure and platforms.
• Provide subject matter expertise on disaster recovery and infrastructure resilience for technology projects, solutions review, and major platform implementation.
• Take accountability in considering business and regulatory compliance risks and takes appropriate steps to mitigate the risks.

We are looking for people who

• A bachelor’s degree in computer science / IT, or diploma in a relevant field.
• Minimum 8 years in leadership experience in IT Disaster Recovery or Business Continuity management, with significant exposure to Enterprise IT infrastructure and decision-making capabilities.
• Possess strong expertise in IT disaster recovery, infrastructure resilience, and business continuity practices within complex enterprise environments.
• Ability to translate business recovery requirements into practical infrastructure recovery strategies including RTO/RPO alignment.
• Demonstrate strong leadership in coordinating cross-functional teams during DR exercises and major incident recovery scenarios.
• Experienced in developing DR governance, standards, and operational procedures aligned with industry and regulatory frameworks.
• Proactive problem solvers who can identify resilience gaps and drive continuous improvements to recovery capabilities.
• Communicate effectively with both technical teams and senior management during planning, testing, and crisis situations.
• Highly organized and capable of managing multiple DR initiatives, exercises, and recovery readiness activities simultaneously.
• Familiarity with enterprise architecture and security frameworks.
• Strong understanding of IT Infrastructure domains, including data centres and cloud platforms, network and connectivity, compute and storage, database, etc.
• Planning and organizational skills for undertaking team leadership and BAU workload management.
• Self-driven with a positive attitude and strong leadership skills to champion for culture change management initiatives within IT and with interfacing Business stakeholders.
• Excellent stakeholder engagement, communication, and negotiation skills.
• Structured, analytical approach to problem-solving and risk management.
• Ability to operate effectively in a fast-paced, complex environment.
• Ability to coordinate complex troubleshooting and post-mortem activities across teams and vendors.

How you succeed

• Champion and embody our Core Values in everyday tasks and interactions.
• Demonstrate high level of integrity and accountability.
• Take initiative to drive improvements and embrace change.
• Take accountability of business and regulatory compliance risks, implementing measures to mitigate them effectively.
• Keep abreast with industry trends, regulatory compliance, and emerging threats and technologies to understand and highlight potential concerns/ risks to safeguard our company proactively.

Who we are

Founded in 1908, Great Eastern is a well-established market leader and trusted brand in Singapore and Malaysia. With over S$100 billion in assets and more than 16 million policyholders, including 12.5 million from government schemes, it provides insurance solutions to customers through three successful distribution channels – a tied agency force, bancassurance, and financial advisory firm Great Eastern Financial Advisers. The Group also operates in Indonesia and Brunei.

The Great Eastern Life Assurance Company Limited and Great Eastern General Insurance Limited have been assigned the financial strength and counterparty credit ratings of "AA-" by S&P Global Ratings since 2010, one of the highest among Asian life insurance companies. Great Eastern's asset management subsidiary, Lion Global Investors Limited, is one of the leading asset management companies in Southeast Asia.

Great Eastern is a subsidiary of OCBC, the longest established Singapore bank, formed in 1932. It is the second largest financial services group in Southeast Asia by assets and one of the world’s most highly-rated banks, with an Aa1 rating from Moody’s and AA- by both Fitch and S&P. Recognised for its financial strength and stability, OCBC is consistently ranked among the World’s Top 50 Safest Banks by Global Finance and has been named Best Managed Bank in Singapore by The Asian Banker.