Director, Head of Operational Resilience Testing

Title: Director, Head of Operational Resilience Testing

Office Status: Hybrid New York, NY

Base Salary: $175k $200k + Bonus

ABOUT THE ROLE

This is a senior leadership opportunity within the Operational Resilience function of a leading global financial institution, offering full ownership of a newly established Integrated Testing function across the Americas region. The role carries a genuine build mandate designing and executing a unified testing strategy that validates the firm's ability to prepare for, respond to, and recover from disruptions across IT infrastructure, data systems, third-party services, and critical business processes. Operating as a testing-as-a-service capability, this function spans disaster recovery, cyber recovery, business continuity, third-party resilience, and scenario-based exercises at asset, application, and process levels. It's the right seat for a seasoned operational resilience leader with 12 15 years of progressive DR and integrated testing experience who combines deep technical expertise with executive presence and the ability to engage regulators, internal audit, and senior management with confidence.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Define and lead the Integrated Testing strategy within the Operational Resilience program covering capability, DR, third-party, data, and scenario-based exercises at asset, application, and process levels
• Design and operate a testing-as-a-service delivery model with clearly defined SLAs, intake procedures, and engagement standards for stakeholders across all three lines of defense
• Establish a multi-year testing roadmap aligned to the firm's critical operations, impact tolerances, and regulatory commitments including extension of the DR test window over multiple consecutive days to demonstrate resilience during extended outages such as cyber events
• Lead the DR Testing Program including test strategy, stakeholder engagement, test planning (scope, objectives, success criteria), test scripts, day-of execution, and post-test reporting
• Oversee data center loss exercises, failover and failback validation, cyber recovery exercises, and integrated cross-entity scenarios spanning Americas operations and global affiliates
• Drive issue management arising from testing including prioritization, action plans, ownership, and escalation to senior management
• Coordinate asset-level and process-level exercises ensuring alignment with RTO, RPO, MTD, and impact tolerance objectives;integrate third-party testing and facilitate joint testing with BCM, DR, and TPRM teams
• Coordinate tabletop exercises, crisis simulations, and severe but plausible scenario testing spanning business, technology, vendor, and crisis management dimensions
• Maintain DR and testing policies, standards, and procedures;define and report KRIs, KPIs, and compliance metrics to Operational Resilience leadership and senior management
• Serve as primary point of contact for regulators, internal audit, and independent assessments on testing matters;ensure audit-defensible documentation and timely remediation of findings
• Ensure alignment with applicable regulatory frameworks including FFIEC IT Handbook, SR 20-24, BCBS Principles for Operational Resilience, OCC/FDIC guidance, PRA/FCA requirements, CFTC 23.603, and EU DORA where applicable
• Build and lead the Integrated Testing team define roles, responsibilities, and career paths;recruit, develop, and retain talent with required technical and business expertise
• Deploy and optimize tools including Fusion Risk Management, ServiceNow, Power BI, SharePoint, Copilot, and AI-enabled analytics to support planning, execution, issue management, and reporting
• Drive continuous improvement and maturity of the testing function through benchmarking, automation, and adoption of industry leading practices