Disaster Recovery & Major Incident Response Lead

hss; New York (NY); On-site; USD 132,000 - 202,000; Full time

Job summary

HSS in New York, NY seeks a senior Disaster Recovery Lead to manage activation of DR plans, coordinate cross-functional recovery efforts, and ensure readiness for major incidents and outages. You will lead playbooks, runbooks, and post-incident reviews, collaborating with IT, cybersecurity, and business leadership to minimize downtime.

The role demands strong command of DR standards, cross-disciplinary coordination, and continual improvement of recovery playbooks to align with enterprise needs

Responsibilities

• Active and Backup Responder on Duty (AROD/BROD) on a scheduled rotation for major incidents, declared disasters, and extended outages.
• Function as the single point of command and escalation during DR and major incidents in coordination with the Executive on Duty (EOD).
• Assess incident severity and determine when to escalate to disaster recovery activation in collaboration with IT EOD and business leadership.
• Coordinate cross-functional response efforts involving infrastructure, application teams, cybersecurity, vendors, and business operations.
• Lead real-time incident coordination calls and ensure clear task assignment, escalation, and decision tracking.
• Oversee internal and external communications related to service outages, recovery progress, and restoration status. Ensure continuous 24/7 readiness by validating that playbooks, contact lists, tooling access, vendor support, and escalation paths are current, accessible, and executable at all times.
• Ensure effective shift handoffs, documentation continuity, and leadership coverage during prolonged or multi-day incidents.
• Disaster Recovery Execution & Oversight: Own the activation and execution of disaster recovery plans and runbooks during declared events.
• Coordinate technical recovery activities across infrastructure, platform, and application teams.
• Ensure application recovery is validated by appropriate application and business owners prior to declaring service restoration.
• Maintain operational oversight for prolonged recovery efforts, including shift coverage, resource planning, and vendor engagement.
• Ensure recovery actions are executed in accordance with approved DR standards, policies, and tiering requirements.
• DR Program Governance & Readiness: Partner with the DR/BC Governance function to maintain enterprise DR readiness across all application tiers.
• Own the creation, maintenance, and continuous improvement of disaster recovery and major incident playbooks to ensure they are: Present for all in-scope applications
• Technically accurate and executable
• Reviewed and validated on a defined cadence.
• Partner with IT Operations, Infrastructure, Applications, and Cybersecurity teams to validate technical accuracy and operational effectiveness of disaster recovery and major incident playbooks.
• Support application tiering decisions and ensure recovery strategies align to business impact and risk tolerance.
• Lead the planning, execution, and facilitation of disaster recovery testing, tabletop exercises, and simulations; ensure findings are documented and tracked to closure.
• Ensure exercise outcomes, identified gaps, and remediation actions are documented, tracked, and resolved within defined timeframes.
• Ensure DR processes align with internal policies, regulatory requirements, and audit expectations.
• Post-Incident Review & Continuous Improvement: Lead the creation of Root Cause Analysis (RCA) documents and/or postmortem reviews following major incidents and disaster recovery events.
• Ensure lessons learned, control gaps, and process improvements are documented and assigned to accountable owners.
• Track remediation actions through completion and provide status updates to leadership and governance committees.
• Identify recurring incident patterns or recovery risks and recommend corrective actions.

Job description

HSS in New York, NY seeks a senior Disaster Recovery Lead to manage activation of DR plans, coordinate cross-functional recovery efforts, and ensure readiness for major incidents and outages. You will lead playbooks, runbooks, and post-incident reviews, collaborating with IT, cybersecurity, and business leadership to minimize downtime.

The role demands strong command of DR standards, cross-disciplinary coordination, and continual improvement of recovery playbooks to align with enterprise needs