IT Disaster Recovery Manager in London

Company Overview

Howden is a global insurance group with employee ownership at its heart.

Together, we have pushed the boundaries of insurance.

We are united by a shared passion and a no‑limits mindset, and our strength lies in our ability to collaborate as a powerful international team comprised of 24,000 employees spanning over 56 countries.

Role Overview

The IT DR Manager is accountable for defining, implementing, testing and maintaining the organisation’s IT Disaster Recovery (DR) across a regulated, global insurance environment.

The role ensures that critical infrastructure, platforms, and applications are recoverable in line with agreed recovery objectives, regulatory expectations, and operational resilience requirements.

Working closely with infrastructure service managers, security, technology risk, compliance, and third‑party vendors, the IT DR Manager provides governance, oversight, and assurance that DR strategies, plans, testing, and documentation remain effective, current, and auditable.

Key Responsibilities

• DR Strategy & Framework: Ensure howden Group Services ITDR capability complies with the recovery elements of the Group Technology Operational and Resilience Frameworks; input into framework updates and improvements.
• Define end‑to‑end recovery objectives for infrastructure and technology services that support business‑facing services RTOs and RPOs.
• Ensure business‑facing services owners are aware of their responsibilities and follow the recovery elements of the framework.
• DR Service Management & Vendor

Oversight: Provide governance and oversight of outsourced vendors delivering DR capabilities, including backup, recovery, replication, and failover services; review vendor deliverables and monitor service performance, risks and compliance against SLAs, KPIs and contractual requirements.

• Recovery Capability Development and

Maintenance: Ensure new services requiring DR recovery solutions meet their end‑to‑end RTO and RPO; support M&A activities and develop end‑to‑end recovery sequences for on‑net hosted services; maintain documentation in the recovery tool and CMDB.

• DR Testing & Assurance: Plan, coordinate and oversee regular DR testing exercises, including technical recovery tests, scenario‑based exercises, and resilience simulations; validate results and provide assurance reporting to head of service and compliance.
• Risk, Compliance & Audit: Ensure compliance with regulatory requirements relating to operational resilience, outsourcing and technology risk; support internal and external audits, regulatory reviews and assurance activities; identify and report DR‑related risks and control gaps.
• Stakeholder Engagement & Reporting: Act as the primary point of contact for IT DR across various business units; produce clear reporting on DR posture, test outcomes, risks and improvement plans.
• Continuous

Improvement: Drive improvement of DR capabilities, tooling, testing maturity and documentation quality; identify opportunities to enhance resilience through automation and modern cloud‑based solutions.

Qualifications and Experience

Essential

• Proven experience in IT Disaster Recovery and Technology Resilience within a complex, regulated environment.
• Strong understanding of infrastructure and platform recovery across on‑prem, hybrid and cloud environments.
• Demonstrable experience managing outsourced DR services and third‑party providers.
• Solid knowledge of DR, BCP and operational resilience frameworks and best practices.
• Experience planning and executing DR tests and audits, including managing follow‑up actions.
• Strong stakeholder management, communication and documentation skills.

Desirable

• Experience within insurance or financial services.
• Knowledge of regulatory expectations such as FCA, PRA, EBA or equivalent.
• ITIL, ISO 22301 or operational resilience‑related certifications.
• Familiarity with cloud‑native DR solutions such as Azure resilience patterns.
• Experience with orchestration tools such as Cutover.

Benefits

• Opportunity to shape and operationalise technology resilience frameworks and tools.
• A career that you define, supported by a culture that values diversity and personal ownership.
• Reasonable Adjustments

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations at Howden to ensure that our positions align well with your needs, including flexible hours and hybrid working where possible.

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