Howden is a global insurance group with employee ownership at its heart. Together, we have pushed the boundaries of insurance. We are united by a shared passion and no-limits mindset, and our strength lies in our ability to collaborate as a powerful international team comprised of 24,000 employees spanning over 56 countries.
People join Howden for many different reasons, but they stay for the same one: our culture. It’s what sets us apart, and the reason our employees have been turning down headhunters for years. Whatever your priorities – work / life balance, career progression, sustainability, volunteering – you’ll find like-minded people driving change at Howden.
The IT DR Manager is accountable for defining, implementing, testing and maintaining the organisation’s IT Disaster Recovery (DR) across a regulated, global insurance environment.
The role ensures that critical infrastructure, platforms, and applications are recoverable in line with agreed recovery objectives, regulatory expectations, and operational resilience requirements.
Working closely with infrastructure service managers, security, technology risk, compliance, and third‑party vendors, the IT DR Manager provides governance, oversight, and assurance that DR strategies, plans, testing, and documentation remain effective, current, and auditable.
The role is heavily vendor‑dependent, with responsibility for ensuring outsourced providers deliver DR services in line with contractual and regulatory obligations.
Finally, Howden has developed new Technology resilience frameworks, DR methods, technical recovery standards and implemented a recovery tool. The successful candidate will work closely with technology risk, on-net entities, infrastructure and applications to operationalise them.
DR Service Management & Vendor Oversight
Provide governance and oversight of outsourced vendors delivering DR capabilities, including backup, recovery, replication, and failover services.
Review vendor deliverables including DR plans, technical designs, test results, and remediation actions.
Monitor service performance, risks, and compliance against SLAs, KPIs, and contractual requirements.
Recovery capability development and maintenance
Maintain inventories of recoverable systems, dependencies, recovery tiers, and criticality classifications. This will involve ensure that these are effectively flagged within the CMDB.
Plan, coordinate, and oversee regular DR testing exercises, including technical recovery tests, scenario‑based exercises, and resilience simulations.
Identify, assess, and report DR‑related risks and control gaps, ensuring mitigation plans are in place.
Stakeholder Engagement & Reporting
Work closely with Infrastructure Service Managers, Architecture, Technology Risk Security, and Business Continuity teams.
Produce clear, concise reporting on DR posture, test outcomes, risks, and improvement plans.
Drive continuous improvement of DR capabilities, tooling, testing maturity, and documentation quality.
Qualifications and Experience:
A career that you define. At Howden, we value diversity – there is no one Howden type. Instead, we’re looking for individuals who share the same values as us:
Our successes have all come from someone brave enough to try something new
We support each other in the small everyday moments and the bigger challenges
We are determined to make a positive difference at work and beyond
We're committed to providing reasonable accommodations at Howden to ensure that our positions align well with your needs. Besides the usual adjustments such as software, IT, and office setups, we can also accommodate other changes such as flexible hours* or hybrid working*.
If you're excited by this role but have some doubts about whether it’s the right fit for you, send us your application – if your profile fits the role’s criteria, we will be in touch to assist in helping to get you set up with any reasonable adjustments you may require.
- Not all positions can accommodate changes to working hours or locations. Reach out to your Recruitment Partner if you want to know more.
Permanent
