IT Disaster Recovery Lead

Legal & General America•Frederick, MD

37d•Hybrid

About The Position

At Legal & General America, we aim to make a positive difference in the lives of our customers, partners, colleagues, and the communities in which they live. As a recognized market leader of term life insurance, we’re working to transform our business through innovation and technology to provide products and solutions that help American families secure their financial futures. We are a future-focused company, passionate about what we do and how we do it. This means working with pace and energy to reach our goals and challenging ourselves to achieve more. We strive to create a unique environment where balance between work and life is possible. Our employees' passion, dedication and hard work, as well as our career development opportunities, benefits, and employee activities contribute to our positive workplace culture. 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 ensuring rapid recovery of systems and applications in the event of an outage or disaster. The ideal candidate will possess a deep understanding of IT infrastructure, cloud technologies, and the ability to coordinate complex DR exercises across various teams and stakeholders. This role partners closely with Cybersecurity, Infrastructure, Cloud Engineering, 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.

Requirements

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 disaster recovery 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 disaster recovery 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 disaster recovery exercises and incident response drills.
Solid understanding of networking, server architecture, and storage systems.
Proficiency in scripting/automation for recovery testing (PowerShell, Python, Terraform, etc.) desirable.
Understanding of containerized workloads and DR approaches for Kubernetes and serverless environments.
Strong leadership and project management skills.
Excellent communication, problem-solving, and decision-making abilities.
Ability to collaborate and coordinate efforts across multiple teams and departments.
Attention to detail and a proactive approach to identifying and mitigating risks.
Comfort operating under pressure during crisis events and guiding cross-functional teams through recovery.

Nice To Haves

Certified Business Continuity Professional (CBCP) or similar.
Disaster Recovery Institute International (DRII) certification.
AWS Certified Solutions Architect or Azure Solutions Architect Expert.
ITIL Foundation or similar IT Service Management certification.
ISO 22301 Lead Implementer or Certified Cloud Security Professional (CCSP) considered a plus.

Responsibilities

Develop, implement, and manage IT disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity (BC) strategies for critical IT systems and services.
Design, document, and regularly update disaster recovery 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 the 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 ensure alignment of DR strategies with business requirements and regulatory compliance.
Lead the identification and implementation of automation and tools to improve disaster recovery capabilities.
Integrate DR planning with cloud, on-remise data center and hybrid environments, ensuring recovery coverage across IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS platforms.
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 existing disaster recovery plans.
Provide training and awareness to teams on disaster recovery policies, procedures, and best practices.
Act as the primary point of contact during disaster recovery incidents, coordinating responses and ensuring rapid recovery actions.
Continuously improve disaster recovery processes by staying updated on industry trends, technologies, and best practices.
Support Crisis Management Committee with critical components of the plan in order that they can make critical decisions.
Provide visibility and reporting to the Crisis Management Committee on the critical functions, individuals and infrastructure within the business plans.
Collaborates 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.
Identifies and implements recovery operations and methods to allow the company to function at limited or partial capacity in the event that part or all of the infrastructure is damaged or destroyed.
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.