Resilience Lead

At Aberdeen, our ambition is to be the UK’s leading Wealth & Investments group. Strengthening talent and culture is one of our strategic priorities. We strive to make Aberdeen a great place to work so that we can attract and retain the industry’s best talent. Our people put our stakeholders at the heart of everything they do by helping us to make a positive difference to the lives of our clients, customers, colleagues, shareholders, and society.

We are focused on growing our direct and advised wealth platforms and repositioning our specialist asset management business to meet client demand. We are committed to providing excellent client service, supported by leading technology and talent.

Aberdeen comprises three businesses, interactive investor (ii), Investments, and Adviser, each of which focuses on meeting and adapting to our clients’ evolving needs:

• Interactive investor, the UK’s second largest direct-to-consumer investment platform, enables individuals in the UK to plan, save, and invest in the way that works for them.
• Our Adviser business provides financial planning solutions and technology for UK financial advisers, enabling them to create value for their customers.
• Our Investments business is a specialist asset manager that focuses on areas where we have both strength and scale to capitalise on the key themes shaping the market, through either public markets or alternative asset classes.

As part of the Business Resilience Team, the Resilience Lead is responsible for the implementation, management and ongoing development of Aberdeen’s Resilience Framework, across functions including Operational Resilience, Business Continuity, Crisis Management and Physical Security. The Lead is responsible for overseeing the review, maintenance and continual improvement of Important Business Services, Critical and Important Functions, BIAs, plans and playbooks, forging effective working relationships with business owners to ensure delivery of resilience outcomes and that activities are conducted in line with Aberdeen’s Resilience Policy and Framework.

Key Responsibilities:

• Build and maintain strong working relationships with business owners, acting as a trusted advisor on resilience matters and ensuring critical activity is delivered in accordance with the Resilience Framework.
• Support the review and continual improvement of Important Business Services, including maintaining and deepening mapping of processes, dependencies and workarounds.
• Support the delivery of regular testing of all components of the Resilience programme and conduct analysis on the results, ensuring that lessons learned are understood by the business owners and tracked to completion.
• As part of Aberdeen’s On Call Incident Manager rota, support the response to local and major incidents and support the Operational Resilience Business Partners, Resilience Response & Testing Manager and Head of Resilience in the management of major and crisis level incidents.
• Develop and review Plans and Playbooks used by the business to support their response to disruptive events.
• Deliver training, workshops and exercises to business stakeholders, covering all Resilience functions.
• Work with the business to remediate operational vulnerabilities raised via incidents, tests/exercises or audits, ensuring that appropriate remediation plans are developed and progressed to completion.
• Undertake analysis to identify opportunities to mitigate, manage or remove risks which threaten our ability to continue to operate during an incident or interruption.
• Develop, implement and manage our agreed controls to govern existing effectiveness and alignment with ISO22301, client and Regulator obligations.
• Contribute to both internal and external audits, including review of collated material to ensure all compliance requirements are sufficiently covered.
• Provide regular updates to Operational Resilience Business Partners, as and when required, for reporting requirements such as Board papers, Internal Capital Adequacy Assessment Process and Security and Resilience programme planning.
• Prepare and deliver dashboards, MI packs, and status updates for senior stakeholders.
• Promote global awareness of the Resilience policy, framework, standards, plans, processes and roles and responsibilities.
• Engage with internal and external parties in their response to resilience requirements.

The ideal candidate will possess the following:

• Demonstrable strong understanding of current thinking across Operational Resilience, Business Continuity, Crisis Management and/or Physical Security.
• Familiarity with relevant Resilience regulations and standards, including PS21/3 Operational Resilience, DORA and ISO22301.
• Strong organisational and analytical skills - with the attention to detail and ability to interpret operational data, process flows, and risk trends.
• Strong communication skills, capable of working collaboratively across multiple business teams and engaging with technical and non‑technical stakeholders.
• Proactive, inquisitive mindset and willingness to deep‑dive into complex processes.
• Ability to think calmly and logically to deliver high quality work when under pressure.

Required:

• Recognised resilience and/or cyber certification qualification e.g. Member of the Business Continuity Institute (MBCI) or accredited ISO22301 Auditor, CISM, CISSP.
• Experience in coordinating or supporting the response to disruptive incidents.
• Experience in developing and delivering presentations/workshops/training to senior level executives.
• Proven ability to forge strong working relationships with individuals from business and supporting functions within a multinational or complex organisation.

Desirable:

• Understanding of financial services, asset management operations and/or platform services, particularly within a Resilience context.
• Knowledge and experience of ServiceNow in relation to Operational Resilience and Business Continuity Management.

We are proud to be a Disability Confident Committed employer. If you have a disability and would like to apply to one of our UK roles under the Disability Confident Scheme, please notify us by completing the relevant section in our candidate questionnaire. One of our team will reach out to support you through your application process.

Our benefits include 40 days’ annual leave, a 16% employer pension contribution, a discretionary performance-based bonus (where applicable), private healthcare and a range of flexible benefits – including gym discounts, season ticket loans and access to an employee discount portal.

At Aberdeen we’ve adopted a ‘blended working’ approach, combining the benefits of face-to-face collaboration with the flexibility of working from home. An inclusive culture, where diverse perspectives drive our actions, is at the core of who we are and what we do.

If you need assistance with your application, or a reasonable adjustment to your interview arrangements, please let us know and we’ll be happy to help.