IT Service Specialist: Disaster Recovery at Discovery Limited

Job Purpose

The Service Specialist for IT disaster recovery, capacity and reporting role is to provide assurance for the service continuity and capacity of Discovery Bank’s IT infrastructure. This involves formulating and maintaining the policies procedures and practices for disaster recovery and capacity management and performing the necessary configuration and data collection, analysis, verification, and modelling to ensure continuity and performance of Bank systems in line with applicable policies. The role specifically includes maintenance of disaster recovery plans and scheduling and facilitation of disaster recovery and resilience testing and execution in the event of a declared disaster.

Areas of responsibility may include but are not limited to

Process

IT Disaster Recovery

• Develop, maintain, and enhance disaster recovery plans.
• Manage the introduction of new infrastructure and systems in line with recoverability design standards.
• Schedule and facilitate disaster recovery and component resilience testing.
• Report test results and track remedial activities.

Capacity management

• Develop, maintain, and enhance the procedures for capacity management of key technologies (storage, network, processor, memory etc.)
• Manage the routine aggregation of system performance and capacity-related data feeds.
• Model and forecast capacity demand.
• Facilitation of tracking of business system and project-related capacity demands.
• Provide actionable analysis and data to internal support groups.

Operational and governance reporting

• Develop, maintain, and enhance the procedures for the required reporting obligation into mandated governance forums. [and producing the reports]
• Collate, transform, aggregate and store data from relevant sources to produce history reporting with forecast and trending of key performance metrics. This extends to all key metrics for IT Infrastructure.

Leadership and teamwork

• Work with internal colleagues to ensure they have the appropriate information and knowledge at hand to be successful in what they do.
• Facilitate and guide activities involving cross-functional teams to achieve outputs and objectives.
• Provide periodic reports on performance against plan & progress on medium-term initiatives & use to realign operating plan and objectives appropriately.
• Proactively identify interconnected problems, develop and model alternative solutions as well as contingency plans.
• Continuously identify areas of improvement that will enhance efficiency.

GOVERNANCE

• Ensure the consolidation of the risk profile for the area of accountability, manage critical risks, and provide timely reporting and feedback.

PEOPLE

• Communicate strategic context that guide best practice, foster an environment of continuous learning and improved employee engagement levels.

CLIENT

• Define and influence relationships made with internal and external stakeholders.
• Build and maintain relationships with stakeholders to ensure integrated approaches in pursuit of collective goals.

Personal Attributes And Skills

• Strong knowledge of IT Infrastructure technologies with specific knowledge of techniques and practices for infrastructure and system resilience, continuity, and recovery.
• Strong knowledge and interpretation of IT capacity and performance metrics, collection, and aggregation.
• Data analysis and modelling
• Knowledge of IT Service Management processes
• Ability to engage at all levels of seniority (including Executive Management)
• Decisiveness and Influencing Others
• Effective Business Communication
• Functional Policies and Procedures
• Strategic Planning and Reporting.
• Ability to carry out assigned tasks independently with little supervision.

Education And Experience

• Relevant Tertiary Qualification
• At least 8 years’ experience in IT technical management, disaster recovery planning and testing.
• Solid experience in compiling of reports and presentation,
• Formal certification is disaster recovery / business continuity management would be advantageous.
• IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) certification