Technical Architect – Disaster Recovery Runbooks

Technical Architect – Disaster Recovery Runbooks
Location: Remote (Hybrid available)
Contract Type: 3-month contract
Rate: £425 per day (Inside IR35)
Security Clearance: SC clearance required (active and transferable, minimum 3 months validity)

Overview

We are seeking an experienced Technical Architect with strong Disaster Recovery (DR) and resilience expertise to lead the design, development, and validation of end-to-end DR runbooks across critical IT services.

This role focuses on ensuring robust, executable recovery strategies that align with business continuity requirements, including RTO/RPO targets, dependency mapping, and recovery sequencing across complex infrastructure and application landscapes.

Key Responsibilities

• Analyse Business Impact Analysis (BIA) outputs and translate into technical recovery requirements
• Define minimum viable recovery states for critical services
• Design end-to-end disaster recovery strategies, including full environment loss scenarios
• Develop and maintain detailed DR runbooks with clear recovery steps and decision points
• Identify dependencies, sequencing requirements, and failure modes across applications and infrastructure
• Lead tabletop exercises and structured runbook walkthroughs
• Validate recovery procedures and refine based on testing outcomes
• Collaborate with application, infrastructure, and architecture teams to ensure operational readiness
• Provide structured handover documentation to support teams for ongoing ownership

Required Experience

• Strong background in Disaster Recovery architecture and resilience engineering
• Proven experience designing end-to-end DR solutions (not component-level only)
• Hands-on experience producing DR runbooks from scratch
• Strong understanding of RTO/RPO and BIA interpretation
• Experience with cloud, hybrid, and on-prem infrastructure environments
• Ability to map complex application and infrastructure dependencies
• Experience running DR tests, tabletop exercises, and recovery simulations
• Strong technical documentation and stakeholder communication skills
• Experience working in high-pressure operational environments

Desirable Experience

• Cloud recovery strategies (AWS, Azure, or hybrid environments)
• Experience with microservices, SaaS, and legacy application architectures
• Exposure to enterprise-scale resilience frameworks and standards
• Experience refining DR processes through real-world testing outcomes

Security Requirement

Candidates must hold active SC clearance that is transferable and valid for at least 3 months.