IT Manager - Disaster Recovery in Newcastle upon Tyne

Mott MacDonald is a global engineering, management, and development consultancy with over 20,000 employees across more than 50 countries and 140+ offices. We work across incredible global industries, delivering exciting work that is defining our future and making an important societal impact in the communities we serve. Our people power our performance – we succeed when they do. With countless opportunities to collaborate, learn, and grow, the possibilities for excellence are as varied as every individual.

Location/s: Newcastle, UK

Overview of the role

The IT Disaster Recovery Manager reports to the Head of IT. Cyber Security & Infrastructure and serves as the IT Process Owner for the Disaster Recovery (DR) process. In this role, you will own the end‑to‑end lifecycle of Disaster Recovery across the Technology estate. You will ensure every recovery plan, procedure and action follows robust governance, aligns with industry best practice (including ISO 22301), and protects the stability and availability of Mott MacDonald’s global technology services. You will play a strategic role in strengthening organisational resilience, managing risk, and maturing Technology Service Continuity capabilities.

Responsibilities include working closely with cross‑functional teams to validate dependencies, reviewing DR documentation, assessing technical and operational risks, and ensuring that recovery strategies are embedded into service design and ways of working. The role also focuses on enhancing the Disaster Recovery process and documentation within the organisation, maintaining high‑quality DR plans, streamlining testing workflows, and preparing readiness for automation and orchestration. Additionally, you will be responsible for the management and administration of crisis management systems, ensuring they are operationally ready, up‑to‑date, and accessible during DR scenarios.

Success in this role requires driving the maturity of Disaster Recovery practices and embedding them across the organisation. You will continually advance DR governance and readiness, reduce operational risk, and ensure recovery capabilities are both predictable and efficient. By working proactively with IT service owners, operational teams, and crisis response stakeholders, you will foster accountability, safeguard availability, and ensure that recovery actions are tested, executable, and aligned with organisational risk appetite and objectives.

Key responsibilities and duties include:

• Manage the full lifecycle of the Disaster Recovery process, ensuring alignment to ISO 22301, strong governance controls, and full audit compliance.
• Prepare, lead, and drive Disaster Recovery planning, reviews, and assessment sessions, ensuring structured governance, risk evaluation, and strategic decision making.
• Drive accountability across IT and business stakeholders, ensuring ownership of DR plans, documentation accuracy, recovery roles, and validated risk assessments.
• Assess DR plans and test scenarios for technical, business, security and compliance impacts, recommending improvements to strengthen resilience and recovery capability.
• Maintain and communicate the Forward Schedule of DR tests and exercises, ensuring visibility and alignment across IT, Business Continuity, and crisis response teams.
• Collaborate with Configuration and Asset Management, ensuring accurate CI records and dependency mapping in the CMDB to support impact analysis and recovery planning.
• Optimise the Disaster Recovery documentation and process workflows, ensuring high quality recovery plans, structured test scripts, streamlined procedures, and readiness for automation.
• Perform post‑exercise and post‑incident reviews, capturing lessons learned, updating plans, and driving continuous improvement throughout the DR lifecycle.
• Align Disaster Recovery activities with Business Continuity, Release & Deployment, and Major Incident Management, ensuring seamless integration with operational processes and escalation paths.
• Lead communications related to Disaster Recovery, ensuring clear, concise, and stakeholder appropriate messaging during planning, testing and active recovery.
• Define and manage actionable KPIs, using data insights to identify bottlenecks, evaluate resilience maturity, and drive improvements and automation opportunities.
• Maintain comprehensive DR documentation, including processes, plans, guidelines, playbooks, and work instructions that support consistent and repeatable recovery.
• Develop and deliver structured training plans to build organisational awareness and adoption of the DR process.
• Lead ISO 22301 Disaster Recovery responsibilities, ensuring DR processes map to BCMS requirements and supporting evidence is available for internal and external audit.
• Manage and administer crisis management systems, ensuring they are fully operational, accessible, regularly tested, and ready to support communications and coordination during a disaster scenario.
• Research and evaluate emerging DR, orchestration, automation and resilience technologies, preparing requirements for future improvement and capability uplift.

Personal Attributes

• Demonstrates ownership while fostering a resilience focused, solution‑oriented culture that drives accountability and continuous improvement.
• Organised and proactive, able to prioritise effectively and deliver outcomes under time‑critical conditions.
• Self‑manages effectively, quickly understanding complex systems and converting technical information into actionable recovery strategies.
• Analytical and process‑minded, applying continuity frameworks and data insights to drive DR maturity.
• Customer‑centric, committed to protecting business operations through predictable, well‑structured recovery processes.
• Produces high‑quality documentation that communicates complex recovery concepts professionally.
• Adaptable and resilient, remaining calm and focused during crisis events and recovery activities.
• Communicates confidently, engaging stakeholders with influence, clarity and negotiation skills.
• Passionate about technology, resilience, emergency planning, and continuous professional development.

Key Performance Indicators

• Percentage of DR plans aligned to ISO 22301 and approved templates.
• Percentage of systems recovered within defined RTO/RPO targets during tests.
• Mean time to complete DR tests within scheduled implementation windows.
• Percentage of DR actions executed through automated or orchestrated workflows.
• Stakeholder feedback on clarity, effectiveness and readiness of DR exercises and communication.

Candidate specification

Essential

• Experience managing Disaster Recovery / IT Service Continuity in complex global environments.
• Track record managing resilience frameworks aligned with ISO 22301 or similar best‑practice standards.
• Governance and risk assessment expertise, including leading DR exercises, documenting outcomes, and validating recovery strategies.
• Broad knowledge of IT infrastructure (servers, networks, cloud, hybrid) with experience analysing dependencies and recovery requirements.
• Ability to influence technical and non‑technical stakeholders across regions.
• Proven capability delivering structured training and producing clear documentation.
• Experience evolving DR processes, implementing controls, and maturing organisational resilience.
• Experience supporting internal and external audits for DR and business continuity.

Desirable

• ISO 22301 certification or equivalent BC/DR professional accreditation (DRI, IDRA, EC‑Council).
• Experience managing crisis communications systems or emergency command‑centre platforms.
• Exposure to automation/orchestration tools used in DR recovery.
• Experience working in global multi‑region organisations.

Agile working

At Mott MacDonald, we believe it makes business sense for you and your manager to choose how you can work most effectively to meet your client, team, and personal commitments. We offer a hybrid working policy that embraces your well‑being, flexibility, and trust.

Equality, diversity, and inclusion

We put equality, diversity, and inclusion at the heart of our business, seeking to promote fair employment procedures and practices to ensure equal opportunities for all. We encourage individual expression in our workplace and are committed to creating an inclusive environment where everyone feels they can contribute.

Accessibility

We want you to perform your best at every stage in the recruitment process. If you are disabled or need any support to enable you to apply or attend an interview, please contact us at reasonable.adjustments@mottmac.com and we will talk to you about how we can support you.

We offer some fantastic benefits including:

• We match employee pension contributions between 4.5% and 7%.
• Life assurance equal up to 4 × your basic salary, with an option to increase the level of cover to 6 × your salary.
• Our income protection scheme provides a financial benefit, as well as absence and return to work support due to long‑term illness or injury.
• Flexible benefits, including increased life assurance cover, critical illness insurance, payroll saving and will writing.
• As an independently owned business we share the financial success of the business with all our colleagues in various ways including annual bonus schemes.

Employee Ownership

Our employee ownership model means no external investors, just us, creating a culture of shared success. Our employees have a stake and a voice in our business, giving them a direct connection to our success through our personal and group performance bonuses. As your career grows, so does your stake, recognizing your long‑term impact and contribution. Your voice matters, with the opportunity connect directly with senior leadership through formal channels to help shape our future. For our senior roles you will have a direct pathway towards ownership from day one.

Health and wellbeing

• Private medical insurance for all UK colleagues.
• Health cash plan to support you with every day health costs and treatments.
• Access to Peppy, providing free support from menopause experts for all UK colleagues.
• A variety of wellbeing support is available through our comprehensive wellbeing program, including access for you and your family.
• Ability to flex your salary to opt into a wide range of health benefits, many of which can be extended to your family too.

Lifestyle

• A minimum of 33‑35 days holiday each year, inclusive of public holidays and dependent on level, with the ability to buy or sell leave through our flexible benefits programme.
• Holiday entitlement increased to a minimum of 35 days after 5 years’ service.
• Variety of employee saving schemes and discounts from high‑street retailers.
• Enhanced family and carers leave.
• Enhanced family leave policies, including 26 weeks paid maternity and adoption leave, and two weeks paid paternity/partner leave.
• Our shared parental leave matches maternity leave meaning we pay up to 24 weeks at full pay.
• Up to five additional days leave are provided for those with significant caring responsibilities, two of which are paid.

Learning and development

• Primary annual professional institution subscription.
• A broad range of opportunities to enhance both technical and soft skills through mentoring, formal training, and self‑development options.

Networks, communities, and social outcomes

Join a wide range of groups including our Advanced Employee Networks which support our LGBTQ+, gender, race and ethnicity, disability, and parents/carers communities. Make a difference within our communities through our social outcomes.

Apply now, or for more information about our application process, click here.