Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery Lead - KSA

The BCDR & DR Automation Lead is responsible for defining, governing, and executing the organization’s Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery strategy, with a strong focus on automation.

The role ensures resilience of critical business services through structured planning, risk management, and advanced recovery orchestration aligned with business and regulatory requirements.

· Define and drive the enterprise BCDR and DR Automation strategy and roadmap, aligned with business continuity objectives and resilience goals.

· Establish and maintain standardized frameworks, methodologies, and best practices for BCP, DR, and automation.

· Ensure compliance with regulatory requirements and industry standards (ISO 22301, ISO 27001, NIST, ITIL).

· Govern adherence to a consistent and integrated DR automation framework across all teams.

· Lead Business Impact Analysis (BIA) to identify critical services, dependencies, and recovery priorities.

· Conduct risk assessments to evaluate threats, vulnerabilities, and operational impacts.

· Define and validate Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO).

· Develop and maintain Business Continuity Plans (BCP) and Disaster Recovery Plans (DRP).

· Design and oversee end-to-end DR automation lifecycle (scope, validation, execution, testing).

· Collaborate with automation teams to:

o Implement and enhance automation workflows and orchestration

o Manage changes to existing automated applications

o Ensure accurate capture of application and inter-application dependencies

· Continuously identify opportunities to increase automation, reduce manual effort, and minimize downtime and risk.

· Ensure automation solutions support achievement of RTO/RPO targets.

· Lead and coordinate efforts across Application, Infrastructure, Network, Database, Security, and Business SMEs.

· Ensure alignment between business and IT stakeholders on DR priorities and execution approach.

· Orchestrate communication across technical teams, internal leadership, and customer stakeholders to enable real-time decision-making.

· Plan and lead DR testing activities, including:

o Control tests and sequential automation testing

o Dry runs and technical rehearsals

o Full-scale DR simulation and live failover exercises

· Lead coordination for UAT and DR testing processes, including approvals and stakeholder alignment.

· Validate recovery strategies through structured testing and ensure operational readiness.

· Lead coordinated recovery execution to ensure timely restoration of services and business continuity.

· Ensure implementation of DR dashboards, monitoring, and alerting tools to provide visibility into recovery readiness.

· Provide executive-level reporting on:

o DR test results

o Risks and gaps

o Remediation plans and progress

· Contribute to Steering Committee (SteerCo) updates and lead discussions when required.

· Identify, track, and drive timely mitigation of risks across BCDR and DR automation initiatives.

· Analyze test outcomes and incidents to drive continuous improvement and optimization.

· Enhance overall resilience posture while optimizing cost and operational efficiency.