Disaster Recovery Program Manager

Summary:

The Program Manager, Disaster Recovery plans, coordinates, and executes IT disaster recovery exercises, and manages disaster recovery-related projects to ensure the timely delivery of quality solutions. This individual will provide leadership, vision, and direction to key business and technology initiatives by integrating processes, systems, and information to fulfill the program’s objectives. The ideal candidate will be an effective leader with experience guiding cross-functional teams and coordinating stakeholders across multiple disciplines.

Essential Job Duties and Responsibilities:

• Work directly with Business Partners, IT, infrastructure, application, cybersecurity, risk, and other subject matter experts to define disaster recovery objectives, scope, exercise plans, dependencies, and execution strategy.
• Serve as the project manager for disaster recovery-related projects across the company, coordinating cross-functional teams, managing project plans, tracking dependencies, risks, issues, and deliverables, and ensuring successful execution of disaster recovery objectives.
• Schedule, coordinate, and facilitate disaster recovery exercises, including defining exercise scope, confirming participant readiness, documenting results, tracking remediation actions, and ensuring lessons learned are incorporated into future recovery planning.
• Provide after-hours support during actual disaster recovery events or business disruptions, including nights and weekends, as needed to coordinate recovery activities and support timely restoration efforts.
• Direct assigned programs throughout the project life cycle, aligning project resources to achieve goals, and ensuring established timelines are met.
• Measure and monitor disaster recovery project progress, exercise readiness, risks, issues, and remediation status to ensure deliverables are completed on time, within budget, and within scope of recovery objectives.
• Lead project owners across disaster recovery workstreams, including internal technology teams and vendor partners, to ensure recovery objectives, timelines, dependencies, and deliverables are being met.
• Develop and provide status updates on disaster recovery projects, exercise readiness, results, remediation, and risks to project members, stakeholders, and executive management.
• Negotiate project plans, time frames, and trade-offs with Business Partners, and apprise management of impact to project while appropriately balancing project scope, schedule, budget, quality, and risks.
• Develop, analyze, and manage multiple project plans and appropriate documentation.
• Coordinate with Business Partners, Business Analysts, Developers, Quality Analysts, infrastructure teams, application teams, cybersecurity, and Vendors to identify requirements, dependencies, recovery impacts, and areas of business and system risk.
• Follow applicable IT Software Development Life Cycle, change management, risk management, and disaster recovery governance policies and procedures.
• Lead development and/or review of project budgets and resource estimates.
• Work with leadership to improve project disciplines across the organization.
• May involve supervisory duties of other IT project leaders and/or project coordinators.
• Occasional travel may be required to support disaster recovery testing, planning activities, and corporate meetings.
• Maintain regular and punctual attendance.
• Comply with all company policies and procedures.

Other Job Duties and Responsibilities:

Performs other related duties as assigned.

Supervisory Responsibilities:

• This position is an individual contributor.

Qualifications:

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential function satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required.

Education and/or Experience:

• 10+ years of Program and Project Management / experience in leading large, complex project teams across various project and/or software development methodologies (e.g. waterfall, agile).
• Experience managing disaster recovery, business continuity, infrastructure, technology resilience, or related IT risk initiatives preferred.
• B.S. or B.A. or equivalent work experience required; advanced degree or certification beneficial.
• Proven track record of completing projects to specifications while dealing with challenges such as cross-team dependencies, changing schedules, and constantly evolving requirements.
• Proven track record of driving multiple teams on parallel projects, balancing resourcing, and priorities to meet business needs.
• Relevant work experience in technology with a broad understanding across multiple IT disciplines.
• Excellent professional development skills such as oral and written communications, personal credibility, teamwork and collaboration, work planning, and estimating. Ability to present different messaging across all project stakeholders including business and IT senior management, vendors, and team members.
• Highly organized, self-motivated, customer oriented and able to work independently as well as within a team and with internal business and technology partners including executive management.
• Skilled in building and motivating technical teams and possess the ability to build strategic relationships and influence people at all levels of the organization.
• Experience in effective coaching and mentoring other project managers across corresponding work streams.
• Comfortable in a fast-paced, multi-tasked environment.
• Possesses exceptional strategic thinking, planning, and relationship skills.
• Solid change management, negotiation, and facilitation skills.
• Ability to create and manage project benefits and cost benefit analyses.
• Previous experience in Mortgage Banking and/or associated lines of business is highly preferred.

Certificates, Licenses, Registrations:

• PMP certification preferred

Work Complexity:

Problems and issues faced are numerous, typically undefined where information is difficult to obtain. Conducts extensive investigation to understand root cause of problems and how to make sense of them in the larger financial/mortgage (or job-specific) industry. Problems span a wide range of difficult and unique issues across functions and/or businesses. 

Work Environment:

The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. Work is normally performed in a typical interior office work environment which does not subject the employee to any hazardous or unpleasant elements. The noise level in the work environment is usually moderate.

Physical Demands:

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. While performing the duties of this job, the employee is frequently required to sit and talk or hear. The employee is occasionally required to stand; walk; use hands to finger, handle, or feel; and reach with hands and arms. The employee must occasionally lift and/or move up to 25 pounds.

Equal Employment Opportunity:

The company is committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants without regard to race, ethnicity, color, sex, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, pregnancy, religion, national origin, age (40 and over), disability, military status, genetic information, or any other basis protected by applicable federal, state, or local laws.

Americans with Disabilities Act:

Applicants as well as employees who are or become disabled must be able to satisfactorily perform the essential job functions of the position either with or without reasonable accommodation. Applicants as well as employees are encouraged to meet with Human Resources as the organization shall review reasonable accommodations on a case-by-case basis in accordance with applicable law.

Job Responsibilities:

The statements reflect the general duties and responsibilities considered necessary to perform the essential functions of the job and should not be considered as an all-inclusive list of all the work requirements of the position. The company may change the specific job duties with or without prior notice based on the needs of the organization.

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