Cybersecurity Disaster Recovery Expert

About the Role

We are looking for a Senior Cybersecurity Disaster Recovery Expert to provide strategic oversight and governance of IT resilience and Disaster Recovery (DR) capabilities within a critical infrastructure environment.

In this role, you will ensure that DR strategies and business continuity arrangements remain realistic, validated, and aligned with business priorities. You will provide expert guidance on complex recovery scenarios, assess different DR options, and contribute to the continuous improvement of DR and Business Continuity processes, frameworks, and organizational maturity.

Key Responsibilities

DR Strategy & Governance

• Define and maintain Disaster Recovery strategies, policies, standards, and frameworks.
• Ensure that RTO/RPO requirements are realistic and properly embedded within IT architecture.
• Advise on multi-site recovery strategies, failover patterns, and system interdependencies.
• Provide cost-benefit analysis and recommendations for DR design decisions, including datacenter distance and replication strategies.

Oversight, Reporting & Resilience

• Review DR testing results and ensure that identified issues are followed by actionable remediation plans.
• Maintain and develop dashboards, KPIs/KRIs, and resilience heatmaps.
• Monitor the consistency and coherence of multi-site DR architecture.
• Oversee overall DR readiness and resilience capabilities.

Expert Advisory

• Provide pragmatic expert advice on complex Disaster Recovery and recovery scenarios.
• Guide stakeholders on hybrid cloud and on-premises DR architectures.
• Ensure proper dependency mapping and alignment with enterprise architecture.
• Advice on network, storage, replication, and failover patterns.

Stakeholder Coaching & Documentation

• Guide and coach teams on their Disaster Recovery responsibilities.
• Support the improvement of the overall DR Plan.
• Develop clear documentation, standards, and best practices.
• Promote a strong resilience culture across the organization and its IT partners.
• Influence stakeholders effectively without direct managerial authority.

Maturity & Continuous Improvement

• Assess current DR maturity using recognized models, such as the ISO 22301 maturity scale.
• Define and implement a roadmap for continuous improvement.
• Establish metrics and benchmarks to measure progress.
• Recommend improvements in automation, tooling, processes, and governance.

Key Scope

The role covers:

• DR governance and strategy
• DR policies, standards, and templates
• DR readiness oversight
• Multi-site recovery environments
• DR reporting and KPIs/KRIs
• Integration with risk, audit, and incident management
• DR maturity assessment and improvement initiatives

Required Experience & Qualifications

• 20+ years of experience in IT, including 10+ years of experience in Resilience and Disaster Recovery.
• Proven experience setting up and managing Disaster Recovery in similar, complex environments.
• CISSP certification.
• At least one risk-related certification.
• Minimum Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience.
• Proven experience conducting maturity assessments and improvement programs.
• Strong understanding of:
• DR frameworks such as ISO 27031 and NIST 800-34
• Multi-site and hybrid-cloud architectures
• Network, storage, replication, and failover patterns
• NIS2 resilience obligations
• Proven business experience outside the IT domain.
• Strong ability to influence and collaborate with stakeholders without direct authority.

Language Requirements

Fluent in Dutch, French, and English, both written and spoken.

Additional Requirements

A letter of recommendation from a previous employer or client is required, providing evidence of a successful track record in setting up Disaster Recovery in similar environments.