Disaster Recovery Specialist

Job Description

Job Description

Position Summary

The Disaster Recovery (DR) & Backup/Recovery Engineer designs, implements, operates, and continuously improves enterprise-grade backup, recovery, and disaster recovery capabilities aligned with NIST 800-53 (CP – Contingency Planning, IR – Incident Response, and IA/PL dependencies). This role is both technical and customer-facing, requiring strong executive presence, the ability to communicate risk and recovery posture clearly, and deep hands-on expertise across AWS and cloud-native DR strategies.

This role is critical to ensuring the resilience of our SaaS platforms hosted primarily on AWS, supporting state, county, and federal government customers with high availability, regulatory, and continuity expectations.

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Responsibilities

Disaster Recovery & Backup Strategy

• Design, implement, and maintain backup and recovery architectures for single-tenant and multi-tenant SaaS environments.
• Define and maintain RPO/RTO targets aligned to customer contracts, SLAs, and regulatory requirements.
• Architect multi-region DR strategies (warm standby, pilot light, backup-and-restore, active/passive).
• Ensure backup and DR strategies align with NIST 800-53 controls, including but not limited to CP-2, CP-4, CP-6, CP-7, CP-9, CP-10.

Cloud & Platform Operations

• Implement and manage backup solutions for:
• AWS RDS (Oracle, SQL Server)
• EC2 (EBS snapshots, AMIs)
• S3 (versioning, replication, lifecycle policies)
• DynamoDB, ECS, and other cloud-native services
• Evaluate and integrate third-party backup solutions where appropriate.
• Ensure encryption at rest and in-transit for all backup data.

Testing, Validation & Continuous Improvement

• Plan, execute, and document mock, simulated, and live backup and recovery tests across all supported platforms.
• Lead scheduled and ad-hoc recovery exercises, including tabletop simulations and technical failover tests.
• Validate backup integrity through restore testing (file-level, system-level, and application-level).
• Plan and execute annual and customer-requested DR tests, including full evidence collection.
• Analyze test results and drive remediation, automation, and optimization.
• Create, update, and maintain backup and recovery runbooks, playbooks, and standard operating procedures (SOPs).
• Ensure documentation remains current as environments, platforms, and architectures evolve.

Customer & Executive Engagement

• Serve as the primary DR and Backup subject matter expert for customers, auditors, and internal executives.
• Present DR posture, test results, and risk assessments to customer leadership, regulators, and internal executives.
• Support RFPs, RFIs, audits, and security assessments.
• Translate technical recovery strategies into business-impact language.

Security, Compliance & Governance

• Partner with Security, Compliance, and Engineering teams to align DR strategy with:
• NIST 800-53
• CJIS (where applicable)
• SOC 2 / ISO-aligned controls
• Support incident response activities related to data loss, outages, or recovery events.
• Ensure backup and DR configurations are codified using Infrastructure as Code (Terraform) where possible.

Qualifications

Experience

• 7+ years of experience in Disaster Recovery, Backup, or Business Continuity roles.
• Hands-on experience designing DR solutions in AWS and/or other major cloud providers (Azure, GCP).
• Experience supporting state, county, or federal government customers.
• Experience working in regulated environments (Justice & Public Safety strongly preferred).

Technical Skills

• Deep understanding of:
• Backup and recovery architectures
• Snapshot-based and replication-based recovery
• Cross-region and cross-account DR strategies
• Strong AWS expertise:
• EC2, EBS, RDS, S3, DynamoDB, IAM, CloudWatch
• Infrastructure as Code experience (Terraform preferred).
• Understanding of networking and security fundamentals (VPCs, VPNs, encryption, IAM).

Professional Skills

• Strong executive presence and ability to brief senior leadership.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to work directly with customers in high-stakes recovery and outage scenarios.
• Calm, methodical, and decisive under pressure.

Preferred Qualifications

- Experience in Justice and Public Safety (JPS) or Public Sector SaaS.

- Familiarity with:

• CJIS
• FedRAMP concepts
• SOC 2 or ISO 27001
• Experience supporting RFPs and customer audits.
• Experience with automation of DR testing and validation.

What Success Looks Like

• Backup and recovery processes are tested, documented, and repeatable.
• Recovery objectives (RPO/RTO) are consistently met and defensible.
• Customers and executives have confidence in Mi-Case's recovery posture.
• DR tests are predictable, evidence-driven, and low-risk.
• Backup and recovery are treated as engineering disciplines, not reactive tasks.

EEO Compliance:

Ryde is an Equal Employment Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Ryde will consider qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable law.