Senior Business Continuity & Resilience Manager

Job Purpose

Job Purpose

The Senior Business Continuity Manager is responsible for establishing, maintaining and continually improving the organisation's enterprise-wide approach to Business Continuity, Operational Resilience and Crisis Preparedness.

Based within the Security function but operating across the entire organisation, the role will provide central leadership and governance for business continuity, ensuring critical business services, technology, people, facilities and third-party dependencies can withstand and recover effectively from significant disruption.

Acting as the central lead for Business Continuity and Resilience, the position will coordinate activities across business stakeholders and subject-matter experts whilst maintaining enterprise-wide oversight of resilience capabilities and improvement activities. Working closely with senior leaders across Technology, Product, Security, Operations, Finance, HR, Legal, Risk and other business functions, the successful candidate will establish appropriate recovery requirements, maintain credible continuity arrangements and ensure these capabilities are regularly exercised and improved.

The role is also responsible for ensuring Business Continuity arrangements support relevant regulatory, customer, contractual and certification obligations, with particular focus on maintaining audit-ready evidence and alignment with standards including ISO 22301 and ISO 27001, alongside relevant SOC 2 requirements.

The successful candidate will build upon and mature the organisation's existing resilience capabilities, driving greater consistency, assurance and operational readiness across the enterprise.

About Product & Technology

Product & Technology plays a pivotal role in aligning the organization with its strategic objectives and enhancing shareholder value. Product & Technology is responsible for establishing unified standards and governance practices throughout the company. Additionally, we oversee the development and maintenance of core applications essential for the seamless operation of various functions across the organization. We are committed to driving and executing future roadmaps that are in line with the overall strategic direction of RWS. 

With a global reach, Product & Technology provides support services to over 7500 end users worldwide. We take pride in managing the information security operation and safeguarding all our assets. Our core functions encompass Enterprise & Technical Architecture, Network & Voice, Infrastructure, Service Delivery, Service Operations, Data & Analytics, Security & Quality Compliance, Transformation, Application Development, Enterprise Platforms, With a dedicated team of over 500 staff, Product & Technology ensures a strong presence across all regions, enabling efficient and effective support to our global operations.

Job Overview

Key Responsibilities

• Enterprise Business Continuity

  • Own and continually develop the organisation's Business Continuity Management System (BCMS) and enterprise Business Continuity framework.
  • Establish appropriate policies, standards, methodologies and governance for Business Continuity across the organisation.
  • Coordinate and maintain Business Impact Assessments (BIAs) across critical business services and functions.
  • Ensure critical business services and their supporting processes, systems, people, locations, suppliers and other dependencies are identified and understood.
  • Work with business owners to establish appropriate Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs), Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs) and recovery priorities.
  • Ensure business continuity plans are maintained, reviewed and appropriate for the risks faced by the organisation.
  • Ensure Business Continuity and resilience requirements are appropriately considered within supplier onboarding, contracting and assurance activities for critical third-party services.

  Technology & Operational Resilience

  • Work closely with Technology, Security and business teams to ensure business continuity requirements are appropriately reflected within disaster recovery and technology resilience capabilities.
  • Provide credible challenge over whether technology recovery capabilities support business recovery requirements.
  • Understand modern enterprise technology environments including cloud infrastructure, SaaS platforms, identity services, networks, cyber security controls, backup and recovery and third-party technology dependencies.
  • Ensure technology recovery exercises are connected to wider business continuity scenarios rather than considered solely as technical DR testing.
  • Identify material resilience gaps and ensure appropriate remediation plans and risk decisions are established.
  • Maintain visibility of critical business services and their supporting technology, supplier, process, facility and people dependencies to support resilience decision-making.

  Testing, Exercising & Crisis Preparedness

  • Own and maintain the enterprise crisis-management framework, supporting executive leadership during significant incidents and organisational crises.
  • Establish and manage an enterprise-wide schedule of continuity exercises, scenario simulations and recovery testing.
  • Design and facilitate tabletop and executive-level exercises covering credible disruption scenarios such as cyber incidents, technology outages, supplier failures, loss of premises and loss of critical services.
  • Capture lessons learned and ensure improvement actions have clear ownership and are tracked through to completion.
  • Ensure lessons learned from incidents, crises and exercises are incorporated into crisis-management and business continuity arrangements.

  ·       Compliance, Assurance & Governance

  • Maintain alignment between Business Continuity arrangements and applicable standards, contractual obligations and assurance requirements.
  • Maintain audit-ready evidence demonstrating planning, testing, exercising, remediation and continual improvement.
  • Support internal and external audits, customer assurance activities and certification assessments.
  • Track continuity-related audit findings, risks, exceptions and remediation activities.
  • Provide regular reporting on Business Continuity and resilience maturity, risks, testing and remediation to senior governance forums.
  • Maintain strong alignment between Business Continuity, Enterprise Risk Management, Information Security and operational risk processes.

  Stakeholder Leadership

  • Act as the organisation's subject-matter expert for Business Continuity and Operational Resilience.
  • Build strong relationships with senior leaders and establish clear accountability for continuity within individual business functions.
  • Influence stakeholders across a complex global organisation where the role has enterprise accountability without necessarily having direct authority over delivery teams.
  • Translate technical and operational resilience issues into clear business risk, financial, customer and regulatory impacts.
  • Provide constructive challenge where continuity or recovery arrangements do not adequately address organisational requirements.
  • Develop awareness, guidance and training to strengthen resilience capability across the organisation.

Skills & Experience

• Enterprise Business Continuity

  • Own and continually develop the organisation's Business Continuity Management System (BCMS) and enterprise Business Continuity framework.
  • Establish appropriate policies, standards, methodologies and governance for Business Continuity across the organisation.
  • Coordinate and maintain Business Impact Assessments (BIAs) across critical business services and functions.
  • Ensure critical business services and their supporting processes, systems, people, locations, suppliers and other dependencies are identified and understood.
  • Work with business owners to establish appropriate Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs), Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs) and recovery priorities.
  • Ensure business continuity plans are maintained, reviewed and appropriate for the risks faced by the organisation.
  • Ensure Business Continuity and resilience requirements are appropriately considered within supplier onboarding, contracting and assurance activities for critical third-party services.

  Technology & Operational Resilience

  • Work closely with Technology, Security and business teams to ensure business continuity requirements are appropriately reflected within disaster recovery and technology resilience capabilities.
  • Provide credible challenge over whether technology recovery capabilities support business recovery requirements.
  • Understand modern enterprise technology environments including cloud infrastructure, SaaS platforms, identity services, networks, cyber security controls, backup and recovery and third-party technology dependencies.
  • Ensure technology recovery exercises are connected to wider business continuity scenarios rather than considered solely as technical DR testing.
  • Identify material resilience gaps and ensure appropriate remediation plans and risk decisions are established.
  • Maintain visibility of critical business services and their supporting technology, supplier, process, facility and people dependencies to support resilience decision-making.

  Testing, Exercising & Crisis Preparedness

  • Own and maintain the enterprise crisis-management framework, supporting executive leadership during significant incidents and organisational crises.
  • Establish and manage an enterprise-wide schedule of continuity exercises, scenario simulations and recovery testing.
  • Design and facilitate tabletop and executive-level exercises covering credible disruption scenarios such as cyber incidents, technology outages, supplier failures, loss of premises and loss of critical services.
  • Capture lessons learned and ensure improvement actions have clear ownership and are tracked through to completion.
  • Ensure lessons learned from incidents, crises and exercises are incorporated into crisis-management and business continuity arrangements.

  ·       Compliance, Assurance & Governance

  • Maintain alignment between Business Continuity arrangements and applicable standards, contractual obligations and assurance requirements.
  • Maintain audit-ready evidence demonstrating planning, testing, exercising, remediation and continual improvement.
  • Support internal and external audits, customer assurance activities and certification assessments.
  • Track continuity-related audit findings, risks, exceptions and remediation activities.
  • Provide regular reporting on Business Continuity and resilience maturity, risks, testing and remediation to senior governance forums.
  • Maintain strong alignment between Business Continuity, Enterprise Risk Management, Information Security and operational risk processes.

  Stakeholder Leadership

  • Act as the organisation's subject-matter expert for Business Continuity and Operational Resilience.
  • Build strong relationships with senior leaders and establish clear accountability for continuity within individual business functions.
  • Influence stakeholders across a complex global organisation where the role has enterprise accountability without necessarily having direct authority over delivery teams.
  • Translate technical and operational resilience issues into clear business risk, financial, customer and regulatory impacts.
  • Provide constructive challenge where continuity or recovery arrangements do not adequately address organisational requirements.
  • Develop awareness, guidance and training to strengthen resilience capability across the organisation.

Life at RWS

Life at RWS - If you like the idea of working with smart people who are passionate about growing the value of ideas, data and content by making sure organizations are understood, then you’ll love life at RWS. 

Our purpose is to unlock global understanding. This means our work fundamentally recognizes the value of every language and culture. So, we celebrate difference, we are inclusive and believe that diversity makes us strong. We want every employee to grow as an individual and excel in their career. 

In return, we expect all our people to live by the values that unite us: to partner, putting clients fist and winning together, to pioneer, innovating fearlessly and leading with vision and courage, to progress, aiming high and growing through actions and to deliver, owning the outcome and building trust with our colleagues and clients.

RWS embraces DEI and promotes equal opportunity, we are an Equal Opportunity Employer and prohibit discrimination and harassment of any kind. RWS is committed to the principle of equal employment opportunity for all employees and to providing employees with a work environment free of discrimination and harassment. All employment decisions at RWS are based on business needs, job requirements and individual qualifications, without regard to race, religion, nationality, ethnicity, sex, age, disability, or sexual orientation. RWS will not tolerate discrimination based on any of these characteristics. 

RWS Values 

Get the 3Ps right – Partner, Pioneer, Progress – and we´ll Deliver together as RWS.

Recruitment Agencies: RWS Holdings PLC does not accept agency resumes.  Please do not forward any unsolicited resumes to any RWS employees.  Any unsolicited resume received will be treated as the property of RWS and Terms & Conditions associated with the use of such resume will be considered null and void.