Director, Operational Resilience

The Director of Operational Resilience will lead the credit union’s efforts to ensure operational resilience and preparedness in the face of adverse conditions. This role oversees business continuity and disaster recovery efforts, maintaining policies and procedures; ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements; assessing risks, vulnerabilities and business impact; and overseeing a team of BC/DR and insurance professionals.

1. Enterprise Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Leadership (30%) - The Director of Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery is responsible for providing strategic leadership and direction for the enterprise-wide BC/DR program. This includes collaborating with senior executives to define and refine the organization’s resiliency strategy, establishing a clear vision, and ensuring alignment with business objectives and regulatory expectations. The role oversees the development, implementation, and governance of policies, procedures, and plans, including the enterprise wide and department level business continuity plans that support operational resilience across both cloud-based and on-premises infrastructure environments. The director partners closely with IT leadership to ensure that technology recovery capabilities are aligned with business priorities and that failover strategies are appropriately designed to support critical systems. Additionally, the director defines and monitors key performance metrics to evaluate program effectiveness, ensures plans remain efficient and scalable, and incorporates industry best practices and emerging trends to continuously strengthen the organization’s preparedness.

2. Risk Assessment and Resilience Strategy (20%) - This role is accountable for assessing the organization’s overall resiliency posture across business operations and supporting technology platforms, including cloud-hosted and on-premises systems. The director identifies risks, vulnerabilities, and operational gaps that could impact business continuity and leads Business Impact Analyses (BIA) to determine critical processes and supporting infrastructure dependencies. Through this process, the director ensures that recovery objectives, including Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs) are aligned to business needs. The role drives development and implementation of mitigation strategies, ensuring resilience capabilities are proportionate to risk exposure and aligned with regulatory expectations and the organization’s risk appetite. Ensure assigned business units are operating efficiently and reliably, are in compliance with applicable laws, regulations, and rules, have appropriate operating controls to mitigate risk, and are performing at a high level.

3. Crisis Management and Incident Response (20%) The Director serves as a central leader during business disruptions, coordinating enterprise-wide response efforts across business and technology teams. This includes owning and maintaining the organization’s incident management and mass notification platform (Veoci) to enable timely, coordinated communication and action. The role directs cross-functional collaboration with IT to assess system impacts, activate failover capabilities, and execute recovery procedures for critical platforms across both cloud and on-premises environments. The Director also works closely with Corporate Communications to ensure clear, accurate, and timely messaging to partners, members, and executive leadership. In addition, the role supports executive decision-making, ensures effective execution of Business Resumption, Disaster Recovery, and Pandemic Response Plans, and maintains consistent communication throughout the full lifecycle of an incident.

Beyond technical events, this role is responsible for ensuring organizational resilience during non-technical disruptions such as severe weather, utility outages, and physical security incidents.

1. Testing Exercises and Program Maturity (15%) - The director is responsible for designing and managing a comprehensive testing and exercise program to validate the effectiveness of BC/DR plans across both business functions and supporting environments in technologically. This includes coordinating closely with IT to design, execute, and evaluate failover and recovery tests for critical systems, including cloud-based applications and on-premises infrastructure. The role ensures that testing scenarios reflect realistic disruption events, documents results, and drives continuous improvement based on identified gaps. Additionally, the director advances overall program maturity by refining processes, enhancing testing methodologies, and promoting organizational training and awareness to strengthen readiness across the enterprise.

2. Corporate Insurance Program (10%) - The director oversees day-to-day administration of the credit union’s corporate insurance program, ensuring appropriate coverage is maintained to mitigate financial exposure arising from operational disruptions, cyber events, and other emerging risks. This includes administration, policy management, and carrier relationships, while aligning insurance coverage with enterprise risk assessments and business continuity strategies. The role ensures coordination with internal stakeholders and external partners to evaluate coverage adequacy, support claims processes, and integrate risk transfer mechanisms into the broader resiliency framework.

3. Manages vendor relations, including: (5%)

a. Involvement in sourcing, evaluating, and selecting resiliency, insurance, and other critical vendors.

b. Participation in the negotiating of contracts with potential vendors to ensure optimal pricing and mitigation of third-party risks.

c. Ongoing monitoring of vendors to ensure they provide quality products and services in alignment with organizational goals.

Required Skills

1. A bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Technology, Business Administration, or related field. A master’s degree is strongly preferred.

2. 10 years of experience within business continuity, disaster recovery, or operational risk roles.

3. Knowledge of BC/DR best practices and FFIEC guidance

4. Prior supervisory/leadership experience

5. Ability to understand disaster recovery concepts for a modern technology stack (digital, cloud, emerging technologies, APIs, RPAs, and SaaS)

6. Ability to work nights and weekends during a crisis event

7. Excellent communication skills, especially related to facilitation, documentation, and reporting.

Ability to explain technical concepts to non-technical audiences.

Required Experience