Head of IT Disaster Recovery & Continuity

University of East Anglia - IT and Computing Services

Location: Norwich

Salary: £48,822 per annum, dependent on skills and experience, with an annual increment up to £56,535 per annum.

Hours: Full Time

Contract Type: Permanent

Placed On: 24th March 2026

Closes: 13th April 2026

Job Ref: ALC1629

Starting salary from £48,822 per annum, dependent on skills and experience, with an annual increment up to £56,535 per annum.

Make UEA more resilient, lead the recovery capability that keeps learning, teaching and research running.

We’re hiring a Head of IT Disaster Recovery & Continuity to build and lead our university‑wide ITDR capability: policy and governance, assured recovery plans, end‑to‑end testing, SaaS assurance, and the dashboards that give leaders confidence in our resilience. You’ll work across ITCS and the wider university, shaping roadmaps that align with business RTO/RPOs and our Digital Strategy.

The impact you’ll have

• Establish and chair the ITDR governance group, set policy & lifecycle, define roles, and maintain recovery dashboards/heatmaps and risk registers.
• Align IT recovery to business BIAs, validate RTO/RPOs, communicate capabilities/constraints, and drive risk acceptance or remediation where gaps exist.
• Define and socialise failure modes (incl. cyber and data‑centre scenarios), scope what we will/won’t recover from, and embed this into testing and plans.
• Orchestrate an ITDR testing programme and build recoverability into change, incident and risk processes.
• Oversee SaaS recovery assurance and cloud concentration risk, integrating supplier evidence into continuity reporting.

What you’ll bring

• Significant enterprise‑scale experience across ITDR/BCM and broad technologies (applications, data, networks, infra, security, service management).
• Proven leadership: governance, stakeholder engagement, vendor management, ITIL best practice; ability to translate complex risk and recovery topics for non‑technical leaders.
• Strength in analysis, change and business case development; confident setting RTO/RPO with the business and evidencing them through testing.
• (Nice to have) ISO 22301, CBCP, CISSP, TOGAF/SABSA; HE sector familiarity.

Why UEA, why now

UEA’s Digital Strategy aims to optimise organisational development through digital enhancement (Aim 4) and strengthen our digital infrastructure & capabilities (Aim 5). This role is pivotal to secure‑by‑design operations and service excellence across a digitally connected campus.

This full-time post is available on an indefinite basis.

UEA offers a variety of flexible working options and although this role is advertised on a full-time basis, we encourage applications from individuals who would prefer a flexible working pattern including annualised hours, compressed working hours, part time, job share, term-time only and/or hybrid working. Details of preferred hours should be stated in the personal statement and will be discussed further at interview.

Further information on our great benefits package, including 44 days annual leave inclusive of Bank Holidays and additional University Customary days, can be found on our benefits page.

Closing date: 13 April 2026

The University holds an Athena Swan Silver Institutional Award in recognition of our advancement towards gender equality.