Description
At Thrivent, we are focused on a digital transformation that will deliver modern, innovative experiences for our clients, financial advisors, and employees. We are investing in data and technology, using DevOps practices, and building an engineering culture of empowered technical experts. Our technologists are involved in work that includes cloud native development, digital architecture and integration, automation, cloud data platforms, artificial intelligence, and machine learning as well as maximizing platforms such as Salesforce, AWS and Microsoft.The Sr Continuity Engineer acts as the subject matter expert for continuity engineering and the overall IT disaster recovery program. This position will work with groups and individuals across the organization to ensure that technology assets are protected as expected, well-architected, and with ever increasing measures of automation and consistency, thereby reducing cost, complexity, and effort associated with disaster recovery in a regulated financial services industry.
Duties & Responsibilities:
- Develops and drives adoption of and adherence to organizational policies, standards, guidelines, and methods for continuity and disaster recovery.
- Plans and leads strategic, large and complex continuity management and disaster recovery exercises to manage risks and opportunities associated with testing.(game days, scenario-based, enterprise-wide, etc).
- Promotes a culture of resilience throughout the organization and drives adoption of and adherence to availability, continuity, and recovery policies and standards.
- Analyses and reports on test activities, results, issues and risks.
- Provides advice and guidance on the planning, design and improvement of service and component availability, continuity management, and disaster recovery.
- Provides advice and guidance on implementing continuity management principles, patterns, standards, and best practices for cloud-based services.
- Aligns continuity engineering and disaster recovery with organizational strategies, objectives and emerging opportunities. Promotes the opportunities technology offers the organization, including the feasibility of change and its likely impact.
- Sets policies, standards, and guidelines for how the organization conducts continuity and disaster recovery development and planning.
- Manages the development, implementation and testing of continuity management plans
- Plans and implements complex and substantial risk management activities within a specific function, technical area, project or program.
- Tests continuity management plans and procedures to ensure they address exposure to risk and that agreed levels of continuity can be maintained.
- Communicates the policy, governance, scope, and roles involved in continuity management.
- Develops plans for disaster recovery together with supporting processes.
- Manages the testing of disaster recovery plans.
- Analyses service and component availability, reliability, maintainability and serviceability.
- Contributes to the availability management process and its operation.
- Ensures that services and components meet and continue to meet all of their agreed performance targets and service levels.
- Implements arrangements for disaster recovery and documents recovery procedures. Conducts testing of recovery procedures.
- Analyses service delivery performance to identify actions required to maintain or improve levels of service.
- Initiates and reports on actions to maintain or improve levels of service.
- Diagnoses service delivery problems and initiates actions to maintain or improve levels of service.
- Maintains an overview of the contribution of service delivery arrangements to organizational success. Provides leadership within the industry on the identification of future trends.
- Provides technical expertise to enable the correct application of operational procedures.
- Produces continuity design policies, principles and criteria covering continuity, resilience, and recovery.
- Ensures that operational procedures and documentation are fit for purpose and kept up to date. Ensures that operational issues are identified, recorded, monitored and resolved. Provides appropriate status and other reports to specialists, users and managers and manages the adoption of tools, techniques and processes (including automation) for the management of continuity and disaster recovery.
- Implements consistent and reliable risk management processes and reporting to key stakeholders.
- Engages specialists and domain experts as necessary.
- Ensures that the system design balances functional and non-functional requirements.
- Ensures that all stakeholders are aware of the strategic approach to continuity engineering and timetables. Provides support and guidance to help stakeholders adhere to the approach.
- Contributes to the development of recovery routines and contingency procedures.
- Identifies improvements and contributes to the development of organizational policies, standards, and guidelines for continuity and disaster recovery testing.
- Supports monitoring of the external environment and assessment of emerging technologies.
- Contributes to the creation of reports, technology road mapping and the sharing of knowledge and insights.
- Expert knowledge of systems design, enterprise architecting and implementing large retail business systems
QUALIFICATIONS & SKILLS:
Required:
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or other technical field or equivalent work experience
- 7+ years of experience in Continuity Engineering
- Sound knowledge of industry standard Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) practices
- Sound knowledge of version and revision control practices and procedures
- Sound knowledge of systems design concepts that provide security and stability
- Expertise in debugging code and/or complex log files for troubleshooting and analysis of product defects
- Expert knowledge/experience with querying databases for complex data lookup/update
- Performs reviews with associate team members
We exist to help people achieve financial clarity. At Thrivent, we believe money is a tool, not a goal. Driven by a higher purpose at our core, we are committed to providing financial advice, investments, insurance, banking, and generosity programs to help people make the most of all they’ve been given.
At our heart, we are a membership-owned fraternal organization, as well as a holistic financial services organization, dedicated to serving the unique needs of our clients. We focus on their goals and priorities, guiding them toward financial choices that will help them live the life they want today—and tomorrow.
Thrivent provides Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) without regard to race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, pregnancy, national origin, age, disability, marital status, citizenship status, military or veteran status, genetic information, or any other status protected by applicable local, state, or federal law. This policy applies to all employees and job applicants.
Thrivent is committed to providing reasonable accommodation to individuals with disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation, please let us know by sending an email to human.resources@thrivent.com or call 800-847-4836 and request Human Resources.
