IT Disaster Recovery Lead

Overview

At Banner Life Insurance Company, we lead with heart and ambition. Our people are the driving force behind what we achieve, delivering cutting-edge solutions to support customers, clients, and communities. We are a forward-thinking company energized by our work and how we show up for one another, offering career development opportunities, comprehensive benefits, and programs that support wellbeing.

The IT Disaster Recovery Lead will be responsible for ensuring the business continuity of IT systems and services by designing, implementing, testing, and maintaining disaster recovery (DR) plans and processes. The role requires a strong focus on risk management, business impact analysis, and rapid recovery of systems and applications in the event of an outage or disaster. The ideal candidate will have deep knowledge of IT infrastructure, cloud technologies, and the ability to coordinate complex DR exercises across teams and stakeholders.

This role partners with Cybersecurity, Infrastructure, Cloud Engineering, and Application Engineering teams and business leads to ensure end-to-end resilience across on-premises and cloud workloads. It serves as the enterprise DR subject-matter expert, integrating with Crisis Management, Risk, and Compliance functions to meet NYDFS, NAIC, and Maryland Life regulatory standards.

• Develop, implement, and manage IT disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity (BC) strategies for critical IT systems and services.
• Design, document, and regularly update DR plans, including backup and restoration procedures, incident management, and crisis communication.
• Conduct business impact analysis (BIA) to identify critical systems, applications, and dependencies to prioritize recovery efforts.
• Oversee regular testing of DR and BC plans to ensure effective recovery in the event of an outage or disaster.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams (IT, Security, Operations, Compliance) to align DR strategies with business requirements and regulatory compliance.
• Lead the identification and implementation of automation and tools to improve DR capabilities.
• Integrate DR planning with cloud, on-premises data center, and hybrid environments, ensuring coverage across IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.
• Ensure alignment of recovery point objectives (RPO) and recovery time objectives (RTO) with business requirements.
• Manage risk assessments and perform gap analyses to identify weaknesses in DR plans.
• Provide training and awareness to teams on DR policies, procedures, and best practices.
• Act as the primary point of contact during DR incidents, coordinating responses and rapid recovery actions.
• Continuously improve DR processes by staying updated on industry trends, technologies, and best practices.
• Support Crisis Management Committee with critical components of the plan to inform decision-making.
• Provide visibility and reporting to the Crisis Management Committee on critical functions, individuals, and infrastructure within business plans.
• Collaborate with IT staff to develop and implement best practices to protect and restore data and systems in the event of natural disasters, viruses, and hackers.
• Identify and implement recovery operations and methods to allow the company to function at limited or partial capacity during large-scale disruptions.
• Coordinate DR activities and evidence collection for audits, regulatory certifications, and Board reporting in partnership with the CISO and Risk teams.
• Ability to work nights and weekends during a crisis event.

• Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, or a related field.
• 8+ years of experience in IT disaster recovery, business continuity, or IT operations.
• Strong knowledge of DR frameworks, methodologies, and tools.
• Proven experience with DR/BC testing, incident management, and crisis communication.
• Hands-on experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and hybrid IT infrastructure.
• Experience in IT governance, risk management, and compliance frameworks (ISO 22301, NIST, ITIL, etc.).
• Experience working within regulated industries (insurance, financial services, or healthcare) preferred.
• Demonstrated ability to partner with cybersecurity and infrastructure teams to build integrated resilience programs.

• Familiarity with DR tools and technologies (Veeam, Zerto, Commvault, etc.).
• Knowledge of backup and recovery solutions for virtualized and cloud environments.
• Strong understanding of data replication, fault tolerance, high availability, and failover mechanisms.
• Experience in running simulated DR exercises and incident response drills.
• Solid understanding of networking, server architecture, and storage systems.
• Proficiency in scripting/automation for recovery testing (Power Shell, Python, Terraform, etc.) desirable.
• Understanding of containerized workloads and DR approaches for Kubernetes and serverless environments.

• Strong leadership and project management skills.
• Excellent communication,…