Head of Operational Resilience

Join to apply for the Head of Operational Resilience role at Nest Pensions.

Role Overview

This is a new pivotal role and requires a leader in Operational Resilience to ensure the resilience of its operations across the enterprise. This senior role will encompass oversight across Nest Corporation, the Scheme, Nest Invest, and Nest Insight, ensuring that the organisation is equipped to anticipate, withstand, recover from, and adapt to operational disruptions and emerging risks. The Head of Operational Resilience is expected to operate with a high level of autonomy in day-to-day operations, strategic planning, and decision‑making related to resilience. At the same time, the role operates within a framework of governance and oversight, ensuring alignment with organisational strategy and regulatory obligations. The Head of Operational Resilience is both a strategic leader and an empowered operational manager, expected to act independently but in close partnership with senior leadership.

Experience and Technical Skills

• Significant experience in operational resilience and/or operational risk, preferably within the financial services industries.
• Strong understanding of relevant regulatory frameworks (e.g. FCA).
• Demonstrated ability to lead cross‑organisational projects and influence senior stakeholders.
• Excellent analytical, communication, and interpersonal skills.
• Proven track record in managing multi‑disciplinary teams and driving organisational change.
• Professional qualifications in risk, resilience, or continuity (e.g., MBCI, CBCI, IRM) are welcome.

Personal Attributes

• Able to successfully work with others, demonstrating excellent teamwork and communication skills.
• Strong relationship skills and the ability to effectively draw on input from internal and external stakeholders.
• A problem solver.
• Proactively seeks opportunities to influence, change and take on new projects, doesn’t wait for delegation.
• Comfortable working under their own initiative to develop ideas, influence stakeholders and independently problem‑solve.

Flexible and Agile Working

Everyone's personal situation is different. To make the most out of hybrid working, we’ve introduced different ways of working, which may include subject to role requirements:

• hybrid of office (Canary Wharf, London) and home working (there will be an expectation to attend the office, once–twice a week, or more, as required)
• reduce or vary working hours
• reduce or vary the days worked
• work compressed hours
• job share

Click here to see the benefits we offer at Nest.

Directorate and Department

This role reports to the Director of Central Change & Technology and sits within the Services and Solutions (SaS) Directorate which is led by the Chief Technology and Operating Officer (CTOO). The CTOO reports to the CEO and is a member of the Executive Committee. SaS has accountability for all member facing operations, customer experience delivery, technology, data and enterprise‑wide change.

Organisational Overview

Nest is the UK’s largest workplace pension, servicing 1 in 3 of UK workers. Nest has a bold new purpose “Building financial peace of mind for all” and an ambitious corporate strategy that will see it more than double in size and become one of the largest asset owners in the world. Whilst Nest manages around £50 billion today, that figure will grow to around £100 billion or higher by the end of the decade. That scale of growth makes it essential for Nest to maintain a culture that prioritises operational excellence and utilises technology and data to its optimum. Delivering against this strategy will require transformational thinking and action right across the organisation and a technology and data capability to underpin and enable this ambitious strategy. This role will oversee all enterprise and supplier technology capabilities and partner with delivery teams across Nest, making sure we are bringing our strategy – and future strategies – to life helping our 14 million members have a better retirement outcome. Our award‑winning pension fund is tailored to members’ requirements by combining extensive research and an expert understanding of their needs. First‑class investment practice and governance are the backbone of our organisation. We invest responsibly and sustainably and are always transparent about the choices we make. It is both a privilege and a responsibility to help each of our members achieve the retirement they want.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Everyone is welcome to apply for our roles, and we are determined to ensure that no applicant or employee receives less favourable treatment because of their age, disability, gender identity, marital status, national origin, pregnancy or caring responsibilities, race, religion/belief, sex, sexual orientation or socio‑economic background. We also recognise the importance of diversity of thought and other forms of neurocognitive variation. Nest is a Disability Confident Leader, the highest level of the Disability Confident Scheme. If you have a disability, please declare that you’re applying through the scheme. We aim to offer an interview to those applicants who apply through the Disability Confident Scheme and best meet the minimum criteria. However, there may be some circumstances where this is not possible due to the volume of applications.

Please note that this advert may close early if we receive a sufficient number of satisfactory applications. If you have any difficulty in sending your application or need the application pack in an alternative format, or you require any reasonable adjustments please contact: careers@nestcorporation.org.uk.