Disaster Recovery Consultant

Description:

Job Title:            Disaster Recovery Consultant (Execution & Improvement)

Location:         New York, NY (Remote – EST candidates preferred)

Type:                   Contract

Client:                 Direct Client

Description:

We are seeking an experienced Disaster Recovery (DR) consultant to provide targeted, execution-focused support to strengthen enterprise DR capabilities. This role will focus on enhancing application recovery planning, improving testing and validation practices, and strengthening second line of defense oversight to ensure the organization can effectively recover critical systems in real disruption scenarios.

This is not a steady-state support role. The consultant will be expected to work across technology and business teams to drive tangible improvements in recovery readiness within defined timelines.

Key Responsibilities:

• Partner with Technology, Infrastructure, and Application teams to review and enhance DR plans.
• Validate recovery strategies, including recovery time objectives (RTOs), recovery point objectives (RPOs), and failover capabilities.
• Identify gaps in recovery readiness, including dependencies, data integrity, and environment availability.
• Support design and execution of DR testing, including simulations and failover exercises.
• Assess effectiveness of recovery procedures and recommend practical improvements.
• Ensure DR plans are aligned to critical business services and operational priorities.
• Propose governance enhancements strengthening second line oversight practices.
• Synthesize findings into clear, actionable recommendations and track remediation progress.
• Support preparation of materials for audit, regulatory, and internal governance reviews.

Required Qualifications:

• 9-10+ years of experience in disaster recovery, IT resilience, or technology risk
• Hands-on experience developing and validating DR plans, including application recovery and infrastructure failover
• Experience supporting or executing DR testing (e.g., failover, tabletop, simulation)
• Strong understanding of recovery concepts (RTO, RPO, data recovery, system dependencies)
• Ability to work effectively with technology and infrastructure teams
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
• Strong written and verbal communication skills

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in financial services or other regulated industries
• Familiarity with cyber recovery and ransomware scenarios
• Experience aligning DR with business continuity and critical business services frameworks
• Knowledge of relevant frameworks (NIST, FFIEC, ISO 22301, etc.)

Key Competencies:

• Execution-focused and detail-oriented
• Strong stakeholder engagement across technical teams
• Ability to translate technical recovery concepts into business impact
• Comfortable working under pressure and tight timelines
• Pragmatic, solution-oriented mindset

Candidate Profile Attributes

1. Ideal candidate:

• Deep, hands-on experience with application and infrastructure DR planning and testing
• Has validated recovery strategies (RTO/RPO) and understands real-world feasibility
• Has supported or executed failover tests, simulations, or recovery exercises
• Able to identify gaps in recovery readiness (dependencies, data integrity, environment readiness)
• Comfortable working directly with technology and infrastructure teams

2. Strong Backgrounds

• IT Disaster Recovery / Technology Resilience teams
• Infrastructure or application teams with DR ownership
• Consulting roles focused on DR testing, validation, and uplift
• Experience in regulated environments (financial services is a plus)

3. Disqualifying

• Only experience is BCP/BIAs with no technical DR depth
• No hands-on involvement in DR testing or failover exercises
• Cannot explain how recovery actually works at a system/application level
• Pure governance or audit background without execution experience