The Senior Lead Associate - Backup, Resilience and DR is the service owner and senior technical authority for enterprise backup, recovery, disaster recovery and technology resilience across the Davies Group estate. Reporting to the Manager - Security, Resilience and DR, the role leads the strategy, governance, engineering direction and operational assurance required to protect critical services and data across on-premises, cloud and SaaS environments.
The role works across Hosting, Cloud, Network, Security Operations, IAM, Digital Workplace, Service Management, Architecture, Applications, Data, Risk, Compliance, Business Continuity, Procurement and third-party providers. It translates business impact and risk requirements into tested recovery capabilities, clear recovery objectives, measurable controls and leadership-level assurance.
This is a senior individual-contributor / technical-lead role that may or may not have direct reports. Irrespective of line-management responsibility, the postholder is expected to lead through influence, set standards, coordinate delivery across multiple teams, challenge weak controls and provide clear updates to senior leadership.

Responsibilities

Strategy, ownership and governance

Own the group-wide backup, recovery, disaster recovery and technology resilience service roadmap, operating model, standards and control framework.
Define target-state capabilities, service tiers and improvement priorities aligned to business criticality, risk appetite, architecture standards and regulatory obligations.
Establish clear accountability across infrastructure, application and business service owners for backup coverage, recovery design, testing, evidence and remediation.
Chair or lead resilience governance forums, track decisions and exceptions, and escalate material risks with clear options and recommended actions.

Backup and recovery leadership

Provide technical and service leadership for enterprise backup platforms across on-premises, Azure and other approved cloud or SaaS environments.
Govern backup policies, schedules, retention, encryption, immutability, access controls, capacity, performance and secure off-site or isolated recovery copies.
Ensure critical workloads, databases, virtual platforms, file services, cloud resources and relevant SaaS data are identified, protected and recoverable.
Lead restoration assurance through risk-based restore testing, integrity validation and evidence that recovery outcomes meet approved requirements.
Drive remediation of failed, missed or degraded backups and recurring defects, with root-cause analysis, ownership and prevention actions.

Disaster recovery and resilience

Own the technology DR lifecycle, including service dependency mapping, recovery strategies, DR plans, runbooks, exercise schedules, test scenarios, evidence and post-exercise improvement plans.
Partner with Business Continuity, service owners and application teams to translate business impact analysis into achievable recovery time and recovery point objectives.
Lead tabletop, component, application and end-to-end recovery exercises, including cyber-recovery and loss-of-platform scenarios where applicable.
Coordinate technical recovery during major incidents or declared disasters, providing decision support, status reporting, risk escalation and recovery sequencing.
Validate resilience for new services, major changes, acquisitions and migrations before production acceptance.

Security, risk and compliance

Work with Security Operations and IAM to protect backup administration, credentials and recovery environments using least privilege, segregation of duties and strong authentication.
Maintain audit-ready evidence for backup execution, restore results, DR tests, exceptions, risk acceptance and remediation.
Assess resilience risks arising from ransomware, platform concentration, third-party dependency, data corruption, regional outage, capacity constraint and technology obsolescence.
Ensure control gaps and overdue remediation are visible through the appropriate risk, change and service-governance processes.

Service performance and continual improvement

Define and report meaningful KPIs and KRIs, including backup success, restore success, protection coverage, recovery objective attainment, test completion, open risks and remediation ageing.
Use trend analysis, automation and monitoring to reduce manual effort, improve early warning and prevent repeat failures.
Maintain service documentation, architectural records, policy standards, support models, recovery runbooks and knowledge articles.
Govern supplier performance, licensing, support arrangements, lifecycle plans and commercial inputs for resilience platforms and services.

Stakeholder and leadership communication

Provide concise, evidence-based updates to senior leadership on resilience posture, test outcomes, material risks, incidents, investment needs and delivery progress.
Build effective working relationships across Davies Group technology and business teams, external suppliers and assurance functions.
Mentor engineers and technical leads, promote standardisation and strengthen recovery ownership across delivery teams.
Support recruitment, objective setting and performance direction for team members if direct reports are assigned.

Experience & Education*

Essential

9-15 years of relevant experience in enterprise infrastructure, backup, recovery, disaster recovery or technology resilience, including significant senior technical-lead or service-owner responsibility.
Proven track record of leading backup, resilience and DR capabilities in a large, complex or global organisation.
Demonstrable experience defining and governing enterprise backup and recovery strategies across hybrid environments.
Demonstrable experience planning and leading DR exercises, coordinating multi-team recovery activity and driving closure of test findings.
Experience communicating service posture, risks, incidents, investment needs and remediation progress to senior leadership.
Experience working across infrastructure, application, security, architecture, service management, business continuity, risk and supplier teams.
Experience producing governance documentation, service roadmaps, technical standards, recovery playbooks, dashboards and audit evidence.
Bachelor degree or equivalent professional experience in information technology, computer science, engineering or a related field.

Desirable

Experience within insurance, financial services, professional services or another regulated environment.
Experience supporting organisational integrations, acquisitions, data-centre exits, cloud transformation or major resilience uplift programmes.
Prior people-leadership, matrix-leadership or supplier-management experience.

Skills

Essential

Deep knowledge of enterprise backup architecture, recovery patterns, retention, encryption, immutability, air-gapped or isolated recovery, replication and capacity management.
Strong working knowledge of Commvault Cloud / Backup & Recovery for Azure, Veeam and Metallic, or comparable enterprise platforms.
Strong understanding of Microsoft Azure, Windows Server, Linux, VMware or other virtualisation, storage, databases, networking, identity and cloud-native protection patterns.
Expert understanding of RPO, RTO, service criticality, dependency mapping, recovery sequencing, DR testing and cyber-recovery principles.
Ability to convert business and regulatory requirements into pragmatic engineering controls, service levels, test plans and measurable outcomes.
Strong governance, risk management, problem management, change control and major-incident leadership capability.
Strong analytical skills, with the ability to identify systemic weaknesses from operational data and drive sustainable corrective action.
Excellent written and verbal communication, including the ability to brief senior leadership and explain complex resilience risks in business terms.
Ability to lead through influence across geographically dispersed teams and competing priorities.
Strong documentation discipline and commitment to accurate, audit-ready evidence.

Desirable

Knowledge of Azure Site Recovery, cloud-native backup services and recovery automation.
Familiarity with PowerShell, Python, APIs, infrastructure-as-code and workflow automation.
Familiarity with ITIL practices, ISO 22301, ISO/IEC 27001, NIST guidance and relevant resilience or operational-risk expectations.
Understanding of AIOps, anomaly detection and predictive analytics for backup and resilience monitoring.

Essential requirement (non-negotiable) *

Proven ability to own enterprise backup, recovery, DR and resilience outcomes across a complex, multi-team technology estate.
9-15 years of relevant experience, including leadership of resilience or recovery services for a large organisation.
Availability to support planned DR exercises, major incidents and critical recovery activity outside normal working hours when required.
Ability to communicate confidently with senior leadership, auditors, risk stakeholders and technical teams.
Willingness to challenge control weaknesses, maintain clear accountability and escalate material risk appropriately.
Strong commitment to data protection, service reliability, security and continual improvement.

Essential / preferred

Relevant enterprise backup certification, such as Commvault Certified Professional or Veeam Certified Engineer / Architect, or equivalent demonstrable expertise.
ITIL 4 Foundation or higher.

Desirable

Microsoft Azure Administrator, Azure Solutions Architect Expert or Azure Security Engineer Associate.
Business continuity or resilience certification such as CBCI or CBCP.
Security or governance certification such as CISSP, CISM, CRISC or ISO 22301 / ISO 27001 practitioner or lead implementer / auditor.