SQM-GPS-Infra-DR Test Lead

About Northern Trust:

Northern Trust, a Fortune 500 company, is a globally recognized, award-winning financial institution that has been in continuous operation since 1889.

Northern Trust is proud to provide innovative financial services and guidance to the world’s most successful individuals, families, and institutions by remaining true to our enduring principles of service, expertise, and integrity. With more than 130 years of financial experience and over 22,000 partners, we serve the world’s most sophisticated clients using leading technology and exceptional service.

Role Summary

The DR Testing Delivery Lead is responsible for end-to-end ownership of Disaster Recovery testing strategy, planning, execution, governance, and stakeholder communication across business-critical applications and infrastructure. This role ensures organizational resilience by validating recoverability, meeting RTO/RPO objectives, and aligning DR capabilities with regulatory, audit, and business expectations.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and own enterprise DR testing strategy, roadmap, and operating model
• Ensure alignment with BCP, IT Risk, Cyber Resilience, and Regulatory requirements
• Establish standardized DR test frameworks, runbooks, success criteria, and reporting
• Drive continuous improvement based on test outcomes, incidents, and audits

• Lead DR simulation, failover, and failback testing (technology-led and business-led)
• Coordinate end-to-end DR exercises across applications, infrastructure, cloud, and third-party vendors
• Validate RTO, RPO, MTD, and data consistency across DR events
• Ensure testing coverage for planned, unplanned, and cyber-driven DR scenarios

• Act as single point of accountability for DR testing delivery
• Partner with Application, Infrastructure, Security, Network, Cloud, and Business teams
• Manage executive-level communications, dashboards, and risk escalations
• Support internal/external audits, regulatory reviews, and compliance attestations

• Identify DR gaps, risks, and dependencies; drive remediation plans
• Ensure audit-ready documentation and evidence management
• Support incident post-mortems and lessons learned integration

Mandatory Technical Skills

• Experience: 10–14 years total IT experience, with 5+ years in DR / IT Resilience / BCP delivery leadership.

• Disaster Recovery & BCP
  • DR strategies (Active-Active, Active-Passive, Pilot Light, Backup & Restore)
  • RTO, RPO, MTD definitions and validation
  • DR runbooks, playbooks, and recovery sequencing
• Infrastructure & Platforms
  • Data Centers, Virtualization (VMware), Storage replication
  • Network DR (DNS, load balancers, firewalls)
  • Backup and recovery tools (Commvault, NetBackup, Rubrik, Veeam)

• Cloud & Hybrid DR
  • DR for Azure workloads
  • Cloud-native DR patterns (ASR, AWS Elastic DR, snapshots, multi-region)
  • Hybrid DR integrations
• Application & Data
  • DR for Tier-1 / Tier-2 applications
  • Databases (Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, NoSQL)
  • Data integrity, consistency, and reconciliation validation

Good-to-Have Technical Skills

• Ransomware recovery, clean-room recovery concepts
• Integration with SOC, IR, and Cyber teams
• DR test automation and orchestration tools
• Scripting (Python, PowerShell, Bash)
• CMDB, ITSM, ServiceNow DR modules

Soft & Leadership Skills

• Strong delivery ownership and decision-making
• Executive-level communication and stakeholder management
• Risk-based thinking and escalation judgment
• Ability to manage cross-functional, geographically distributed teams
• Structured problem-solving and incident leadership
• High attention to documentation, compliance, and governance

• Coaching and mentoring DR coordinators and junior leads
• Change management and organizational influence
• Vendor and third-party DR governance

Certifications (Preferred / Nice to Have)

• ISO 22301 / ISO 27001
• ITIL, COBIT
• Cloud certifications (Azure Solutions Architect, AWS Architect)
• BCP/DR certifications (CBCP, MBCI – preferred)

Working with Us:

As a Northern Trust partner, greater achievements await. You will be part of a flexible and collaborative work culture in an organization where financial strength and stability is an asset that emboldens us to explore new ideas.

Movement within the organization is encouraged, senior leaders are accessible, and you can take pride in working for a company committed to assisting the communities we serve! Join a workplace with a greater purpose.

We’d love to learn more about how your interests and experience could be a fit with one of the world’s most admired and sustainable companies! Build your career with us and apply today. #MadeForGreater

Reasonable accommodation

Northern Trust is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the employment process, please email our HR Service Center at MyHRHelp@ntrs.com.

We hope you’re excited about the role and the opportunity to work with us. We value an inclusive workplace and understand flexibility means different things to different people.

Apply today and talk to us about your flexible working requirements and together we can achieve greater.

About Our Pune Office

The Northern Trust Pune office, established in 2016, is now home to over 3,000 employees. The office handles various functions, including Operations for Asset Servicing and Wealth Management, as well as delivering critical technology solutions that support business operations across the globe.

Our Pune team takes our commitment to service to heart. In 2024, they volunteered more than 10,000+ hours into the communities where they live and work. Learn more.