Director, IT Service Continuity
About The Position
The Director, IT Service Continuity provides enterprise‑wide strategic leadership and governance for AbbVie’s IT Service Continuity, IT Crisis Management, and IT Business Continuity capabilities. This role is accountable for defining strategy, setting policy, and ensuring execution of continuity and crisis management practices that protect AbbVie’s business‑critical services and support uninterrupted operations globally. The Director partners with senior technology and business leaders to anticipate and mitigate enterprise risk, ensure regulatory and audit defensibility, and continuously mature AbbVie’s resilience posture. This role balances strategic oversight and executive decision support with operational leadership, ensuring AbbVie can effectively withstand, respond to, and recover from major IT incidents and crisis events. As the functional head of Service Continuity, the Director aligns people, processes, and enabling technologies to deliver a cohesive, risk‑based resilience framework across infrastructure, applications, suppliers, and business operations.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Business, Engineering, or related field with at least 10 years of experience OR Master's Degree with at least 9 years of experience.
- Extensive experience in IT service continuity, IT crisis management, or operational resilience.
- Strong understanding of IT Service Management (ITSM) and ITIL‑based practices (or similar), including incident, major incident, problem, and change management, and their role in supporting service continuity and operational resilience.
- Demonstrated leadership experience managing complex, cross-functional teams.
- Strong knowledge of IT operations, risk-based frameworks, and enterprise technology environments.
- Excellent communication and stakeholder engagement skills.
Nice To Haves
- Experience in regulated environments such as life sciences or healthcare.
- Experience leading large-scale IT incidents or crisis response organizations.
- Familiarity with business or application/system impact analysis, disaster recovery, and supplier risk management.
- Certified Business Continuity Planner Designation (CBCP, MBCP, or equivalent).
- Experience with ServiceNow, Coupa, ProcessUnity, CL Digital.
Responsibilities
- Define, own, and govern AbbVie’s IT Service Continuity and IT Crisis Management strategy, policies, and standards.
- Establish enterprise‑level frameworks, operating models, and accountability structures that integrate service continuity, business continuity, disaster recovery, risk management, and crisis response.
- Drive long‑term capability maturity through roadmap development, investment prioritization, and performance measurement.
- Identify and champion opportunities to enhance Service Continuity, Crisis Management, and Recovery capabilities through process optimization, automation, and responsible use of AI‑enabled solutions, in alignment with AbbVie standards and enterprise technology strategy.
- Provide executive‑level oversight, coordination, and decision support during IT crises and major incidents, including escalation guidance and risk‑informed recommendations.
- Serve as a trusted advisor to senior technology and business leadership on resilience, availability risk, and recovery tradeoffs.
- Represent IT Service Continuity in executive, risk, and compliance forums as required.
- Provide senior leadership oversight and strategic direction for AbbVie’s global Incident Command Center (ICC) supporting 24x7x365 Major Incident Management.
- Partner with the Associate Director (ICC Team Lead) to ensure operational excellence, workforce readiness, succession planning, and continual service improvement.
- Ensure the ICC operating model aligns with ITSM practices and enterprise resilience objectives.
- Provide governance and strategic oversight for IT Event Management practices, ensuring alignment with Major Incident Management, Crisis Management, and Service Continuity objectives, including clear escalation thresholds, integration points, and performance expectations.
- Oversee the risk‑based assessment of applications and systems, including business criticality classification and resilience requirements.
- Provide executive oversight for disaster recovery strategy, testing, remediation, and risk acceptance decisions for business‑critical technologies.
- Ensure continuity and recovery strategies are aligned with business impact, regulatory expectations, and enterprise risk tolerance.
- Establish and oversee governance for third‑party supplier continuity and disaster recovery posture, in partnership with procurement, supplier risk, and legal teams.
- Ensure risk‑based continuity requirements are defined, assessed, and tracked for material suppliers.
- Provide leadership oversight for IT Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery responses to internal, external, and regulatory audits.
- Ensure evidence, reporting, and controls are consistent, defensible, and aligned with enterprise risk management expectations.
- Proactively identify and escalate systemic continuity or recovery risks to senior leadership.
- Lead and develop the Service Continuity organization, setting vision, expectations, and performance outcomes.
- Build a culture of preparedness, accountability, and continuous improvement across global teams and partners.
- Develop talent, successors, and future leaders within the Service Continuity and incident response functions.
Benefits
- paid time off (vacation, holidays, sick)
- medical/dental/vision insurance
- 401(k)
- long-term incentive programs
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Director
