Senior Disaster Recovery Testing Specialist

Job Title: Senior Disaster Recovery Testing Specialist

Location: United Arab Emirates (Remote)

Employment Type: Full-Time

Work Arrangement: 100% Remote — Work From Home

Level: Senior

About the Role

We are seeking an experienced Senior Disaster Recovery Testing Specialist to plan, execute, and improve disaster recovery testing across enterprise IT infrastructure, cloud platforms, applications, databases, and critical business services. The successful candidate will validate recovery procedures, assess system resilience, identify operational gaps, and ensure technology services can be restored within agreed business recovery objectives.

This role requires strong expertise in disaster recovery planning, business continuity, infrastructure recovery, testing methodologies, and incident coordination. You will work closely with infrastructure, cybersecurity, application, database, and business continuity teams to strengthen organizational readiness for outages, cyber incidents, data loss, and other disruptive events.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain disaster recovery test strategies, schedules, scenarios, and execution plans for critical IT services.
• Conduct tabletop exercises, walkthroughs, simulation tests, failover tests, and controlled recovery exercises.
• Validate recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs) against approved business and technical requirements.
• Test recovery procedures for servers, storage systems, databases, applications, networks, virtualization platforms, and cloud environments.
• Coordinate disaster recovery exercises with infrastructure, application, security, operations, and business stakeholders.
• Verify the availability and integrity of backup data, replication mechanisms, recovery environments, and restoration procedures.
• Document test results, recovery timelines, system dependencies, identified weaknesses, and deviations from expected outcomes.
• Perform root-cause analysis of failed tests, recovery delays, configuration gaps, and dependency-related issues.
• Develop remediation plans, assign corrective actions, and track issues through to resolution and retesting.
• Assess disaster recovery documentation, technical runbooks, escalation paths, contact lists, and recovery dependencies for accuracy.
• Evaluate recovery capabilities for scenarios such as infrastructure failure, regional outages, ransomware incidents, network disruption, and data corruption.
• Support cloud disaster recovery testing, including recovery-region readiness, workload restoration, replication validation, and failover procedures.
• Ensure disaster recovery testing aligns with internal policies, contractual obligations, applicable regulations, and recognized industry practices.
• Maintain evidence and documentation for internal audits, external assessments, risk reviews, and business continuity reporting.
• Prepare management reports covering test coverage, recovery performance, outstanding risks, remediation progress, and overall readiness.
• Recommend improvements to recovery automation, testing frequency, resilience architecture, and operational procedures.

Qualifications and Experience

• Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Cybersecurity, Engineering, or a related field.
• Significant experience in disaster recovery, business continuity, infrastructure operations, IT resilience, or recovery testing.
• Strong understanding of disaster recovery frameworks, recovery strategies, RTOs, RPOs, and business impact analysis.
• Practical experience testing recovery procedures across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid infrastructure environments.
• Knowledge of backup and replication technologies, virtualization, storage, networking, databases, and enterprise applications.
• Experience coordinating technical recovery exercises and managing cross-functional stakeholders.
• Familiarity with cloud disaster recovery services and recovery architectures across major cloud platforms.
• Ability to analyze test evidence, identify control gaps, assess operational risks, and develop practical remediation plans.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Excel, reporting tools, and documentation platforms; scripting or test automation experience is an advantage.
• Understanding of IT service management, incident response, cybersecurity recovery, and change management practices.
• Excellent analytical, communication, planning, and problem-solving skills.
• Relevant certifications in business continuity, disaster recovery, cloud infrastructure, or IT service management are advantageous.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

• Test Completion: Percentage of scheduled disaster recovery exercises completed on time.
• Recovery Objective Compliance: Percentage of tested services meeting approved RTO and RPO targets.
• Recovery Success Rate: Percentage of tests completed successfully against defined acceptance criteria.
• Issue Remediation: Timely closure and successful retesting of identified recovery gaps.
• Test Coverage: Proportion of critical systems, applications, and dependencies covered by current recovery tests.
• Documentation Accuracy: Completeness and reliability of recovery plans, test evidence, and operational runbooks.
• Continuous Improvement: Measurable improvements in recovery performance, resilience, and testing effectiveness.

What We Offer

• Competitive compensation based on qualifications and experience.
• Fully remote work-from-home arrangements.
• Opportunities to lead enterprise disaster recovery and IT resilience initiatives.
• Professional development in cloud recovery, business continuity, risk management, and resilience engineering.

How to Apply

Interested candidates should submit an updated CV highlighting their experience in disaster recovery testing, recovery planning, infrastructure restoration, cloud resilience, and business continuity exercises.

Please include examples of recovery tests led, recovery objectives validated, and improvements implemented to strengthen organizational resilience.

Email Subject: Application – Senior Disaster Recovery Testing Specialist (United Arab Emirates Remote)

• Candidates should confirm applicable employment arrangements, residency requirements, and work authorization before accepting an offer.