Manager,Disaster Recovery and Major Incident Response

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HSS is consistently among the top-ranked hospitals for orthopedics and rheumatology by U.S. News & World Report. As a recipient of the Magnet Award for Nursing Excellence, HSS was the first hospital in New York City to receive the distinguished designation. Whether you are early in your career or an expert in your field, you will find HSS an innovative, supportive and inclusive environment.

Working with colleagues who love what they do and are deeply committed to our Mission, you too can be part of our transformation across the enterprise.

Emp Status

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Compensation Range

What you will be doing

The Managers of Disaster Recovery & Incident Response are responsible for leading and coordinating enterprise disaster recovery execution and major incidents to ensure timely, effective restoration of IT services and continuity of business operations.

These resources serve as the Active and Backup Responder on Duty (AROD/BROD) on a rotational basis owning the operational execution of disaster recovery and major incident management (MIM), including activation, coordination, communications, and post‑incident review. The role works in close partnership with business and operations leaders to ensure that technical recovery and operational readiness are aligned, auditable, and sustainable across a large, tiered application portfolio.

This role participates in an on‑call rotation and will require after‑hours availability during incidents or disaster recovery events. The incumbent will be accountable for 24/7 disaster recovery and major incident readiness including crisis response, recovery execution, and prolonged incident support.

Key Responsibilities

Disaster Recovery Program Ownership & Strategy

• Take ownership of the existing DR program and turn it into an internally run program with a charter, policy, standards, and operating model.
• Validate the existing Tier 0, Tier 1, Tier 2, and other classifications with clinical, operational, and business leaders, and complete business impact analyses for the remaining applications.
• Confirm or establish Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) targets for each tier and obtain formal sign-off from business leadership.
• Assess current recovery capability against those targets and document the gaps by application and tier.
• Maintain a DR risk and exception register. Define a risk acceptance process for applications unable to meet approved targets.
• Embed DR requirements into project intake, architecture review, and change management so new applications are implemented with the necessary approved DR standards, policies, and playbooks.
• Partner with the DR/BC Governance function to maintain enterprise DR readiness across all application tiers.

Major Incident Management & DR Execution

• Serve as Active or Backup Responder on Duty (AROD/BROD) on a scheduled rotation for major incidents, declared disasters, and extended outages, including after hours, weekends, and holidays.
• Act as the single point of command and escalation during DR and major incidents in coordination with the Executive on Duty (EOD), driving technical teams toward restoration and making sure the right people are engaged quickly.
• Assess incident severity against defined criteria. Declare major incidents and recommend DR activation with IT EOD and business leadership.
• Coordinate cross‑functional response efforts involving infrastructure, application teams, cybersecurity, vendors, and business operations.
• Lead real‑time incident coordination calls and ensure clear task assignment, escalation, and decision tracking.
• Send the first stakeholder communication within 15 to 20 minutes of declaration and provide updates to IT leadership, clinical and business stakeholders, and EOD at a defined cadence until service is restored.
• Oversee internal and external communications related to service outages, recovery progress, and restoration status. Maintain continuous 24/7 readiness by validating that playbooks, contact lists, tooling access, vendor support, and escalation paths are current, accessible, and executable.
• Oversee activation and execution of DR plans and playbooks during declared events. Coordinate recovery across infrastructure, platform, application, cybersecurity, and vendor teams.
• Ensure effective shift handoffs, documentation continuity, and leadership coverage during prolonged or multi‑day incidents.

DR Testing & Readiness

• Own the maintenance and continuous improvement of disaster recovery and major incident playbooks. Confirm they exist for all in-scope applications, work as written, and are reviewed on a defined cadence.
• Partner with IT Operations, Infrastructure, Applications, and Cybersecurity teams to validate technical accuracy and operational effectiveness of disaster recovery and major incident playbooks.
• Support application tiering decisions and ensure recovery strategies align to business impact and risk tolerance.
• Lead the planning, execution, and facilitation of disaster recovery testing, tabletop exercises, and simulations. Ensure findings, identified gaps, and remediation actions are documented, assigned to accountable owners, and tracked to closure within defined timeframes.
• Ensure exercise outcomes, identified gaps, and remediation actions are documented, tracked, and resolved within defined timeframes.
• Ensure DR processes align with internal policies, regulatory requirements, and audit expectations.

Problem Management & Post Incident Review

• Establish and mature a formal Problem Management process focused on recurring incidents and systemic reliability risks.
• Ensure qualifying major incidents produce problem records and move through documented Root Cause Analysis (RCA), corrective action, and closure.
• Lead post-incident reviews and RCAs using methods suited to the incident, such as the 5 Whys.
• Ensure lessons learned, control gaps, and process improvements are documented and assigned to accountable owners.
• Track known errors, workarounds, and corrective actions. Escalate overdue or high-risk items.
• Report on recurring incident trends, problem aging, and recurrence after closure.

Change Enablement Oversight

• Provide governance over the Change Enablement process, including normal, standard, and emergency changes.
• Oversee Change Advisory Board operations and ensure high-risk changes receive technical and business review.
• Define risk criteria, approval requirements, and emergency change standards.
• Analyze failed changes, emergency changes, and change-related incidents. Recommend improvements.
• Confirm that high-risk changes include rollback plans, dependency assessments, and recovery considerations.

Stakeholder & Executive Engagement

• Provide regular status updates and briefings to IT leadership, business partners, and governance committees.
• Escalate recovery risks, resource constraints, or unresolved issues to executive leadership as appropriate.
• Partner with business continuity leaders to ensure alignment between IT recovery and operational continuity procedures.
• Perform other duties as assigned or directed by leadership.

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience leading enterprise disaster recovery, resilience, business continuity technology, major incident management, or IT service operations.
• Demonstrated experience building, implementing, or maturing enterprise disaster recovery programs.
• Experience assessing recovery capability against RTO and RPO targets and managing remediation.
• Experience leading incident command or major incident response with senior technical and business stakeholders.
• Effective communication skills and leadership presence.
• This role holds operational command responsibility during declared disasters and major IT incidents.
• After-hours, weekend, and holiday availability are essential functions of the role.
• Success requires the ability to drive execution, accountability, and remediation through influence across multiple teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in healthcare, regulated, or audit‑driven environments.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business Administration, or a related field.
• ITIL Foundation certification.
• Familiarity with ITIL, ISO 22301, NIST, or similar frameworks.
• Disaster Recovery Institute International (DRII) certification, Certified Business Continuity Professional (CBCP), Certified Disaster Recovery Engineer (CDRE), or equivalent.
• Experience with Problem Management and root cause analysis methods.
• Experience working with third‑party vendors during recovery events.

Success Looks Like

• All in-scope applications have business-approved tiers, RTO/RPO targets, and current playbooks.
• Major incidents are declared, communicated, and managed consistently.
• Qualifying major incidents flow into After Incident Review and Problem Management, with actions tracked to closure.
• DR transitions from a reactive effort to a repeatable, trusted operational capability.
• CAB meets on a consistent schedule, change records arrive complete, and failed and emergency changes decline.
• Audit findings tied to DR governance and testing decline.
• undefined

Non-Discrimination Policy
Hospital for Special Surgery is committed to providing high quality care and skilled, compassionate, reliable service to our community in a safe and healing environment. Consistent with this commitment, Hospital for Special Surgery provides care, admits, and treats patients and provides all services without regard to age, race, color, creed, ethnicity, religion, national origin, culture, language, physical or mental disability, socioeconomic status, veteran or military status, marital status, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other basis prohibited by federal, state, or local law or by accreditation standards.

Why work here?

Our patients say it best: We receive consistently high ratings from our patients for the quality of our doctors and our hospital. More than 3,000 have shared their experience in their own words.