Operational Resilience Manager, Testing

Operational Resilience Manager - Testing Location: Bristol or London Hybrid Working Available

Oliver James has partnered with a leading UK financial services organisation to recruit an Operational Resilience Manager - Testing. This is an exciting opportunity to play a key role in strengthening the organisation's operational resilience framework, ensuring critical business services can respond to, adapt to and recover from disruption.

You'll lead the end-to-end delivery of operational resilience testing, working closely with senior stakeholders across the business to develop testing methodologies, execute resilience exercises, and drive continuous improvement. This is a highly visible role offering exposure across technology, operations, risk and business functions, with the opportunity to influence resilience strategy in line with UK regulatory expectations.

• Lead the planning, coordination and delivery of the annual Operational Resilience testing programme.

• Develop and continuously enhance scenario testing methodologies and maintain a comprehensive testing scenario library.

• Deliver Important Business Service (IBS) testing in collaboration with business and technology stakeholders.

• Support and oversee wider resilience exercises, including Business Continuity, IT Service Continuity, Cyber Resilience and Workplace Recovery testing.

• Produce post-exercise reports, identify lessons learned and drive resilience improvement initiatives.

• Contribute to Operational Resilience self-assessments, governance reporting and regulatory compliance activities.

• Work closely with operational resilience, risk, technology and business teams to ensure a joined-up approach across the resilience lifecycle.

• Support crisis and incident management activities, including participation in an out-of-hours on-call rota when required.

• Proven experience in an Operational Resilience role within Financial Services.

• Strong knowledge of Operational Resilience frameworks, scenario testing and regulatory expectations.

• Experience delivering resilience testing programmes across business and technology functions.

• Familiarity with Crisis Management, Incident Management and Business Continuity planning.

• Good understanding of UK regulatory requirements, including PRA/FCA Operational Resilience guidance. Exposure to DORA would be advantageous.

• Strong stakeholder management skills with the ability to influence across multiple business areas.

• Excellent analytical, planning and problem-solving capabilities.

• Experience managing cross-functional initiatives and driving continuous improvement.

• Degree-qualified in Business, Risk, Finance or a related discipline is desirable.