Manager - IT Service Continuity

Job description

The role The IT Service Continuity Manager is accountable for the governance, planning, testing, assurance, and continual improvement of IT service continuity across critical technology services. The role ensures that IT services have appropriate recovery strategies, documented recovery plans, clear ownership, tested recovery capability, supplier alignment, and executive visibility of continuity risks. The IT Service Continuity Manager works closely with service owners, platform owners, infrastructure teams, application teams, cybersecurity, enterprise architecture, risk, audit, business continuity, suppliers, and senior IT leaders to ensure IT can respond effectively to major disruption and recover priority services within agreed business expectations. Key Accountabilities 1. IT Service Continuity Ownership and Governance The IT Service Continuity Manager is accountable for the design, governance, and ongoing effectiveness of the IT service continuity capability. Responsibilities include: • Own and maintain the IT service continuity framework, standards, and operating model. • Define governance controls for continuity planning, testing, evidence, and reporting. • Ensure IT service continuity is aligned to business continuity, enterprise risk, cybersecurity, crisis management, and operational resilience requirements. • Establish clear ownership and accountability for service recovery across technology teams and suppliers. • Act as the senior escalation point for continuity-related risks, gaps, and decisions. • Ensure continuity governance is embedded into operational and project delivery processes. 2. Critical Service Mapping and Recovery Planning Ensure critical IT services have clear recovery requirements, dependencies, and actionable recovery plans. Responsibilities include: • Maintain a view of critical IT services and supporting technology dependencies. • Work with business and IT stakeholders to understand priority services and recovery expectations. • Define and govern recovery objectives, including recovery time, recovery point, and operational workarounds where required. • Ensure service recovery plans are complete, current, practical, and accessible. • Identify service dependency risks across applications, infrastructure, cloud, networks, suppliers, data, identity, and end-user services. • Ensure continuity planning covers both technology recovery and operational support readiness. 3. Disaster Recovery Testing and Assurance Provide assurance that recovery plans can be executed successfully when needed. Responsibilities include: • Define and manage the annual IT service continuity and disaster recovery test schedule. • Coordinate recovery exercises across platforms, applications, infrastructure, suppliers, and operational teams. • Ensure test scope, success criteria, evidence requirements, and acceptance outcomes are clearly defined. • Review test results, identify gaps, and drive remediation actions to closure. • Provide executive reporting on test outcomes, risks, readiness, and improvement progress. • Ensure lessons learned from incidents, exercises, and audits are embedded into continuity plans. 4. Risk, Audit and Compliance Management Ensure IT service continuity risks are visible, governed, and managed effectively. Responsibilities include: • Maintain the IT service continuity risk and control register. • Identify unmanaged recovery risks and escalate areas of unacceptable exposure. • Support internal and external audit activities related to service continuity, operational resilience, and disaster recovery. • Ensure continuity evidence is complete, accurate, and available for audit and governance reviews. • Track remediation actions from audits, incidents, tests, and control reviews. • Ensure continuity controls remain aligned to internal policies, regulatory expectations, and enterprise risk standards. 5. Major Disruption Preparedness and Response Support Support effective operational response during high-impact disruption events. Responsibilities include: • Ensure recovery roles, escalation paths, decision forums, and communication routes are clearly defined. • Provide continuity input during major incidents, crisis events, cyber disruption, supplier failure, and site or platform outages. • Support go/no-go and recovery prioritisation decisions during major disruption. • Ensure recovery actions are coordinated across support teams, suppliers, and service owners. • Capture post-event lessons and convert them into practical improvement actions. • Help ensure critical services can be restored in a controlled, prioritised, and business-aligned manner. 6. Supplier and Third-Party Continuity Governance Ensure suppliers can meet continuity and recovery obligations. Responsibilities include: • Define IT service continuity requirements for third-party suppliers and managed service providers. • Review supplier recovery plans, test evidence, and operational readiness. • Ensure supplier continuity obligations are understood, documented, and regularly reviewed. • Participate in supplier governance forums where continuity, resilience, or recovery risks are discussed. • Escalate supplier-related recovery risks and drive improvement plans where capability is weak. • Ensure supplier dependencies are reflected in service recovery planning and risk reporting. 7. Continual Improvement and Resilience Maturity Improve IT service continuity maturity across the organisation. Responsibilities include: • Define and maintain an IT service continuity improvement roadmap. • Identify opportunities to simplify, automate, standardise, and strengthen continuity management. • Drive improvement actions across documentation, tooling, reporting, testing, ownership, and recovery capability. • Use incident trends, test outcomes, audit findings, and stakeholder feedback to improve resilience. • Promote a culture of operational resilience and proactive risk management. • Provide regular maturity reporting and recommendations to senior IT leadership. Key Responsibilities The IT Service Continuity Manager will: • Own the IT service continuity framework, standards, governance, and roadmap. • Ensure critical IT services have clear, current, and tested recovery plans. • Maintain visibility of critical service dependencies, recovery risks, and control gaps. • Define and manage the annual disaster recovery and service continuity test schedule. • Coordinate recovery exercises across internal teams, suppliers, service owners, and technology domains. • Provide executive reporting on continuity readiness, test outcomes, risks, and improvement activity. • Support major incident and crisis response where continuity or recovery capability is required. • Govern supplier continuity obligations and recovery evidence. • Support audit, compliance, risk, and operational resilience requirements. • Drive continual improvement of IT service continuity maturity and operational resilience. • Partner with business continuity, cybersecurity, enterprise architecture, infrastructure, applications, and IT service management teams. Key Deliverables • IT Service Continuity Framework. • Critical Service Register. • Service Recovery Plans. • Disaster Recovery Test Schedule. • Recovery Test Evidence Packs. • Continuity Risk and Control Register. • Executive Continuity Readiness Report. • Supplier Continuity Assurance Reviews. • Post-test and Post-incident Lessons Learned Reports. • Continuity Improvement Roadmap. • Audit Evidence and Compliance Reporting. • Service Dependency and Recovery Mapping. Required Experience The successful candidate should have 10+years global enterprise accountability in: • Leading IT service continuity, disaster recovery, operational resilience, or technology risk activities in a large or complex organisation. • Working across critical IT services, infrastructure, cloud, applications, networks, identity, end-user services, and supplier ecosystems. • Developing continuity frameworks, recovery plans, disaster recovery testing schedules, and assurance reporting. • Coordinating recovery exercises across multiple technology and operational teams. • Managing risks, issues, audit findings, and remediation plans. • Working with senior stakeholders across IT, business continuity, cybersecurity, risk, audit, and business functions. • Governing third-party suppliers and managed service providers against recovery and support obligations. • Supporting major incidents, crisis events, or high-impact technology disruption. • Producing executive-level reporting on readiness, risk, maturity, and improvement progress. • Operating within ITIL-based service management and enterprise governance environments. Required Skills and Capabilities • Strong understanding of IT service continuity, disaster recovery, and operational resilience principles. • Excellent risk management, governance, and control mindset. • Strong stakeholder management and senior communication skills. • Ability to influence, challenge, and drive action across teams without direct authority. • Strong analytical capability with the ability to turn technical recovery detail into clear executive insight. • Excellent planning, coordination, and facilitation skills. • Ability to manage complex dependencies across services, suppliers, platforms, and geographies. • Strong written documentation and reporting skills. • Commercial awareness relating to supplier obligations, managed services, and recovery commitments. • Ability to operate at both strategic and operational levels. • Calm, structured, and decisive approach during high-pressure disruption scenarios. • Continuous improvement mindset focused on reducing risk and improving service resilience. Preferred Qualifications • ITIL Foundation or higher. • Business Continuity Institute qualification, CBCI, MBCI, or equivalent. • Disaster Recovery Institute qualification, CBCP, EDRP, or equivalent. • ISO 22301, operational resilience, risk management, or audit-related certification. • PRINCE2, PMP, Agile, or equivalent project management qualification. • ServiceNow, continuity tooling, or ITSM platform experience. • Experience operating in a global enterprise environment. Key Stakeholders • CIO and IT Leadership Team. • IT Service Management and Operations Teams. • Business Continuity and Crisis Management Teams. • Cybersecurity and Risk Teams. • Enterprise Architecture. • Infrastructure, Cloud, and Network Teams. • Application Owners and Platform Owners. Service Owners and Process Owners. • Major Incident Management Teams. • Managed Service Providers and Third-Party Suppliers. • Audit and Compliance Teams. • Business Stakeholders and Critical Service Owners. • Procurement and Vendor Management Teams. Measures of Success Success in this role will be measured by: • Clear ownership and governance of IT service continuity across critical services. • Improved quality and currency of recovery plans. • Successful completion of disaster recovery and continuity tests. • Reduced number of failed tests, repeat findings, and unresolved recovery gaps. • Improved visibility of critical service dependencies and recovery risks. • Positive audit, compliance, and risk management outcomes. • Improved supplier recovery assurance and evidence quality. • Faster, better-coordinated recovery during major disruption events. • Clear executive reporting on continuity readiness and risk exposure. • Improved operational resilience maturity over time. • Positive stakeholder feedback on readiness, governance, and business confidence. • Demonstrable reduction in continuity-related operational risk. Dyson is an equal opportunity employer. We know that great minds don’t think alike, and it takes all kinds of minds to make our technology so unique. We welcome applications from all backgrounds and employment decisions are made without regard to race, colour, religion, national or ethnic origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, protected veteran status or other any other dimension of diversity.