Business Continuity Disaster Recovery Planner

About the role

Reporting to the Director of Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery, the BCDR Associate supports the execution, maintenance, and continuous improvement of AmeriLife’s enterprise resilience program. This role assists with Business Impact Analyses (BIAs), Business Continuity Plan (BCP) development and maintenance, Disaster Recovery (DR) coordination, readiness exercises, emergency notification activities, compliance support, program reporting, and stakeholder engagement across corporate departments and affiliate organizations.

Responsibilities

• Aid in the development, maintenance, and annual review of Business Continuity Plans (BCPs) for corporate departments and affiliate organizations.
• Support Business Impact Analyses (BIAs) by helping identify critical processes, applications, dependencies, recovery requirements, and operational impacts.
• Document Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs), Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs), recovery priorities, resource needs, and continuity gaps.
• Maintain accurate BCP and BIA inventories in approved repositories and support periodic reassessments to keep documentation current.
• Partner with IT, Information Security, and business stakeholders to align business continuity strategies with technical recovery capabilities.
• Assist with scheduling, documenting, and tracking Disaster Recovery (DR) exercises, recovery testing, and remediation activities.
• Maintain recovery documentation, testing schedules, and supporting evidence for audit, compliance, and program governance purposes.
• Coordinate tabletop exercises, localized BCP drills, crisis management exercises, and emergency notification tests.
• Prepare exercise materials, document outcomes, track lessons learned, and follow up with plan owners on remediation activities.
• Sustain the enterprise emergency notification system, including contact lists, user profiles, message templates, and test records.
• Aid in continuity awareness and training initiatives across the organization.
• Maintain BCDR program documentation, policies, procedures, standards, playbooks, templates, and training materials.
• Track program metrics, key performance indicators, action items, and remediation activities.
• Support internal audits, regulatory reviews, examinations, and compliance assessments related to business continuity, disaster recovery, and operational resilience.
• Aid in preparing executive reporting, program updates, and governance materials.
• Partner with business units, IT, Risk Management, Compliance, Information Security, Legal, Human Resources, Facilities, and affiliate organizations to gather information and support planning activities.
• Build strong stakeholder relationships to promote resilience awareness, program adoption, and organizational preparedness.
• Help develop scalable program practices, standardize data and workflows, document current manual processes, and prepare those processes for future automation or potential technology enablement.
• Research emerging resilience, continuity, and disaster recovery practices and participate in special projects as assigned.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, Risk Management, Information Systems, Emergency Management, Finance, Information Technology, Cybersecurity, or a related field.
• 3–5 years of experience in business continuity, disaster recovery, operational resilience, risk management, emergency management, audit, compliance, crisis management, IT risk management, or a related discipline.
• Experience supporting continuity planning, risk assessments, audits, compliance reviews, or resilience-related initiatives.
• Familiarity with Business Continuity Management (BCM), Disaster Recovery (DR), crisis management, and operational resilience principles.
• Working knowledge of BIAs, continuity planning methodologies, recovery strategies, testing programs, and RTO/RPO concepts.
• Understanding of operational resilience concepts, critical business process dependencies, and basic IT infrastructure considerations such as backups and cloud environments.
• Familiarity with relevant frameworks and guidance, including ISO 22301, FFIEC Business Continuity Management Handbook, NIST Cybersecurity Framework, NYDFS Cybersecurity Regulation, and FEMA incident management principles.
• Proficiency with Microsoft Office Suite, including Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and Teams.
• Ability to organize and analyze data for planning, reporting, and decision support.
• Strong attention to detail, problem-solving skills, and ability to identify continuity gaps and track remediation activities.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to draft clear plans, summaries, reports, and stakeholder communications.
• Strong organizational and project coordination skills, with the ability to manage multiple priorities and timelines concurrently.