Role Summary
Own, develop, and continuously evolve a robust and effective incident management framework across the organisation, ensuring incidents are managed with speed, control, and clear accountability from detection through to resolution and recovery.
The role is responsible for:
- Defining DNA/Optomany’s Incident Management Framework in accordance with the regulatory framework governing DNA (as a UK regulated firm) and Optomany as a critical outsource provider under DORA.
- Leading incident response across the business, coordinating internal teams and third-party providers to restore service quickly, minimise customer and financial impact, and ensure root causes are fully understood and addressed. This includes establishing strong, consistent communication practices and acting as a central point of control during incidents.
In addition, the role will be instrumental in supporting the maintenance and evolution of operational resilience capabilities, including disaster recovery and business continuity governance, scenario testing, and readiness. This includes regular reporting to senior leadership, including ExCo and Board, on incident performance, resilience posture, and emerging risks.
The position will drive post incident oversight, ensuring root cause analysis is completed to a high standard, actions are delivered, and trends are identified to prevent recurrence. It will also provide insight and recommendations to senior leadership to strengthen overall platform stability and resilience.
A key aspect of the role is building and maintaining strong relationships with Optomany’s outsource customers, third-party providers and partners, ensuring effective collaboration, clear accountability, and high-quality incident response across the wider ecosystem.
The role is accountable for defining and enforcing the organisation’s incident communication standards, ensuring all updates are timely, accurate, and aligned with business, regulatory, and customer expectations.
Reporting into: Head of Product & Delivery
Working hours: 37.5 hours per week. There may be occasional requirements to work outside standard office hours, including evenings and weekends, depending on business needs.
Working location: Remote/London
Key Responsibilities:
Incident Leadership
- Defining DNA/Optomany’s Incident Framework in line with FCA/FMA/EBA/DORA standards
- Lead incident response across business and technical teams
- Take command of incident calls, coordinate cross-functional stakeholders, and drive resolution under pressure
- Make real-time decisions balancing customer impact, financial risk, and recovery speed
Technical Oversight
- Interpret issues across the payments stack (gateway, APIs, terminals, acquirers, issuers)
- Guide and challenge engineering teams during diagnosis and recovery
- Maintain strong awareness of system architecture, integrations, and failure points
Stakeholder Communication
- Act as the single point of contact during incidents (incl communication across the outsource network)
- Provide clear, concise updates to internal leadership, partners, and clients
- Ensure communication is timely, controlled, and focused on business impact
Post-Incident & Continuous Improvement
- Lead post incident reviews and root cause analysis
- Drive corrective and preventative actions through to completion
- Continuously improve incident processes, tooling, and response models
- Contribute to a culture aligned with operational resilience, including scenario readiness and testing
About You:
- Experience working across multiple /complex regulatory environments, with exposure to and a detailed understanding of UK/EU operational resilience frameworks and formal incident reporting (e.g. FCA, FMA, EBA, DORA)
- A sound understanding of Regulatory Outsource Landscape preferred.
- Bachelor’s degree in IT, Computer Science, Business, or related field (or equivalent practical experience)
- 7+ years experience leading incident management or major incident response within a mission-critical, always-on environment
- Proven experience operating within payments ecosystems, with strong exposure to issuer/acquirer interactions and transaction lifecycles
- Strong understanding of ITIL practices (Incident, Problem, and Change Management)
- Strong technical understanding of:
o Distributed systems, APIs, and cloud-based platforms
o Monitoring, alerting, and observability tooling
- Experience leading cross-functional teams under pressure, with the ability to take control and drive outcomes
- Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to translate technical issues into business impact
- Multi-Lingual (German) is a preference but not essential
- Familiarity with industry-standard tooling (e.g. ServiceNow, PagerDuty, Opsgenie, Jira Service Management, Splunk)
- Strong analytical and problem-solving capability, with attention to detail and a structured approach to incident resolution
- Strong understanding of the payment eco system, transaction processing, acquiring and issuing
- Ability to:
o Remain calm and decisive under pressure
o Operate effectively with incomplete information
o Influence and direct teams without formal authority
