Director, IT Service Continuity

Job Description

Job Description

Company Description

About AbbVie

AbbVie's mission is to discover and deliver innovative medicines and solutions that solve serious health issues today and address the medical challenges of tomorrow. We strive to have a remarkable impact on people's lives across several key therapeutic areas including immunology, oncology, and neuroscience - and products and services in our Allergan Aesthetics portfolio. For more information about AbbVie, please visit us at  Follow @abbvie on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, X and YouTube.

Job Description

The Director, IT Service Continuity provides enterprise‑wide strategic leadership and governance for AbbVie’s IT Service Continuity, IT Crisis Management, and IT Business Continuity capabilities. This role is accountable for defining strategy, setting policy, and ensuring execution of continuity and crisis management practices that protect AbbVie’s business‑critical services and support uninterrupted operations globally. 

The Director partners with senior technology and business leaders to anticipate and mitigate enterprise risk, ensure regulatory and audit defensibility, and continuously mature AbbVie’s resilience posture. This role balances strategic oversight and executive decision support with operational leadership, ensuring AbbVie can effectively withstand, respond to, and recover from major IT incidents and crisis events. 

As the functional head of Service Continuity, the Director aligns people, processes, and enabling technologies to deliver a cohesive, risk‑based resilience framework across infrastructure, applications, suppliers, and business operations. 

Responsibilities:

Enterprise Strategy & Governance 

• Define, own, and govern AbbVie’s IT Service Continuity and IT Crisis Management strategy, policies, and standards. 
• Establish enterprise‑level frameworks, operating models, and accountability structures that integrate service continuity, business continuity, disaster recovery, risk management, and crisis response. 
• Drive long‑term capability maturity through roadmap development, investment prioritization, and performance measurement. 
• Identify and champion opportunities to enhance Service Continuity, Crisis Management, and Recovery capabilities through process optimization, automation, and responsible use of AI‑enabled solutions, in alignment with AbbVie standards and enterprise technology strategy. 

Executive Leadership & Crisis Decision Support 

• Provide executive‑level oversight, coordination, and decision support during IT crises and major incidents, including escalation guidance and risk‑informed recommendations. 
• Serve as a trusted advisor to senior technology and business leadership on resilience, availability risk, and recovery tradeoffs. 
• Represent IT Service Continuity in executive, risk, and compliance forums as required. 

Incident Command & Major Incident Management Oversight 

• Provide senior leadership oversight and strategic direction for AbbVie’s global Incident Command Center (ICC) supporting 24x7x365 Major Incident Management. 
• Partner with the Associate Director (ICC Team Lead) to ensure operational excellence, workforce readiness, succession planning, and continual service improvement. 
• Ensure the ICC operating model aligns with ITSM practices and enterprise resilience objectives. 
• Provide governance and strategic oversight for IT Event Management practices, ensuring alignment with Major Incident Management, Crisis Management, and Service Continuity objectives, including clear escalation thresholds, integration points, and performance expectations. 

Business Criticality, Resilience & Disaster Recovery 

• Oversee the risk‑based assessment of applications and systems, including business criticality classification and resilience requirements. 
• Provide executive oversight for disaster recovery strategy, testing, remediation, and risk acceptance decisions for business‑critical technologies. 
• Ensure continuity and recovery strategies are aligned with business impact, regulatory expectations, and enterprise risk tolerance. 

Third‑Party & Supplier Resilience Oversight 

• Establish and oversee governance for third‑party supplier continuity and disaster recovery posture, in partnership with procurement, supplier risk, and legal teams. 
• Ensure risk‑based continuity requirements are defined, assessed, and tracked for material suppliers. 

Compliance, Audit & Risk Management 

• Provide leadership oversight for IT Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery responses to internal, external, and regulatory audits. 
• Ensure evidence, reporting, and controls are consistent, defensible, and aligned with enterprise risk management expectations. 
• Proactively identify and escalate systemic continuity or recovery risks to senior leadership. 

Organization Leadership & Capability Maturity 

• Lead and develop the Service Continuity organization, setting vision, expectations, and performance outcomes. 
• Build a culture of preparedness, accountability, and continuous improvement across global teams and partners. 
• Develop talent, successors, and future leaders within the Service Continuity and incident response functions. 

Qualifications

Required: 

• Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Business, Engineering, or related field with at least 10 years of experience OR Master's Degree with at least 9 years of experience.
• Extensive experience in IT service continuity, IT crisis management, or operational resilience. 
• Strong understanding of IT Service Management (ITSM) and ITIL‑based practices (or similar), including incident, major incident, problem, and change management, and their role in supporting service continuity and operational resilience. 
• Demonstrated leadership experience managing complex, cross-functional teams. 
• Strong knowledge of IT operations, risk-based frameworks, and enterprise technology environments. 
• Excellent communication and stakeholder engagement skills. 

Preferred: 

• Experience in regulated environments such as life sciences or healthcare. 
• Experience leading large-scale IT incidents or crisis response organizations. 
• Familiarity with business or application/system impact analysis, disaster recovery, and supplier risk management. 
• Certified Business Continuity Planner Designation (CBCP, MBCP, or equivalent).
• Experience with ServiceNow, Coupa, ProcessUnity, CL Digital.

Additional Information

Applicable only to applicants applying to a position in any location with pay disclosure requirements under state or local law: ​

• The compensation range described below is the range of possible base pay compensation that the Company believes in good faith it will pay for this role at the time of this posting based on the job grade for this position. Individual compensation paid within this range will depend on many factors including geographic location, and we may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range. This range may be modified in the future. ​
• We offer a comprehensive package of benefits including paid time off (vacation, holidays, sick),  medical/dental/vision insurance and 401(k) to eligible employees.​
• This job is eligible to participate in our long-term incentive programs. 

Note: No amount of pay is considered to be wages or compensation until such amount is earned, vested, and determinable. The amount and availability of any bonus, commission, incentive, benefits, or any other form of compensation and benefits that are allocable to a particular employee remains in the Company's sole and absolute discretion unless and until paid and may be modified at the Company’s sole and absolute discretion, consistent with applicable law.​

AbbVie is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to operating with integrity, driving innovation, transforming lives and serving our community.  Equal Opportunity Employer/Veterans/Disabled.  

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