Staff Security Engineer, Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery

Role Overview:

We're seeking a Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCP/DR) Senior Engineer to help us implement, maintain, and continuously improve our organization's resilience capabilities. Reporting to the Director of Event Response, this role will execute the BCP/DR strategy and own the operational aspects of the continuity function, working cross-functionally across Engineering, Infrastructure, Product, and Business Operations teams to ensure AlphaSense can maintain critical operations during disruptions.

The Director of Event Response owns the overall BCP/DR strategy and direction. This role focuses on translating that strategy into actionable plans, procedures, testing, and day-to-day operational execution. You'll partner closely with the Director of Event Response, CISO, Security leadership, and stakeholders across the company to operationalize a mature, tested, and actionable continuity capability that protects our business and customers.

Reports To: Director of Event Response
Level: Senior Individual Contributor

Key Responsibilities:

Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery Strategy

• Design and implement comprehensive BCP/DR programs aligned with industry frameworks (ISO 22301, NIST SP 800-34, ISO 27001)
• Conduct Business Impact Analyses (BIA) to identify critical business functions, dependencies, and recovery priorities
• Define and maintain Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) for all critical systems and services
• Develop and maintain disaster recovery playbooks and runbooks for various incident scenarios
• Create and manage crisis communication frameworks for security incidents and business disruptions
• Lead tabletop exercises and disaster recovery drills to validate recovery procedures

Cloud Infrastructure & Backup Engineering

• Design and implement backup and recovery solutions for AWS cloud infrastructure (primary focus)
• Build automated backup workflows for databases, storage systems, applications, and configurations
• Implement immutable backup strategies and offsite replication for ransomware resilience
• Monitor backup operations, validate recovery procedures, and maintain backup integrity
• Optimize backup windows, retention policies, and storage costs across cloud environments
• Implement Infrastructure as Code (IaC) for DR environment provisioning and configuration management

Recovery Operations & Testing

• Develop automated failover and failback procedures for critical services
• Design and maintain hot/warm/cold standby environments based on business requirements
• Conduct regular disaster recovery testing and document test results with improvement recommendations
• Build monitoring and alerting systems for backup health, replication lag, and recovery readiness
• Maintain detailed recovery documentation including network diagrams, dependency maps, and configuration details
• Coordinate with application teams to ensure application-consistent backups and recovery procedures

Compliance & Documentation

• Ensure BCP/DR programs meet regulatory requirements and customer commitments
• Maintain comprehensive documentation of recovery procedures, test results, and capability assessments
• Track and report on key resilience metrics including RTO/RPO achievement, test success rates, and recovery drills
• Coordinate with internal audit and compliance teams during assessments
• Participate in vendor risk assessments for third-party backup and recovery solutions

Required Qualifications:

Experience

• 7+ years of hands-on experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS required; GCP/Azure beneficial)
• Deep expertise in enterprise backup and recovery solutions (Veeam, Commvault, AWS Backup, or similar)
• Strong understanding of cloud storage services (S3, EBS, EFS, RDS, DynamoDB, etc.)
• Proficiency with Infrastructure as Code tools (Terraform, CloudFormation, Pulumi)
• Experience with containerized environments (ECS, EKS, Docker) and their backup/recovery patterns
• Knowledge of database backup and recovery procedures (PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, etc.)
• Understanding of storage technologies, replication methods, and data protection architectures

BCP/DR Expertise

• 3+ years of experience in Business Continuity Planning and Disaster Recovery
• Proven track record of designing and implementing BCP/DR programs for technology organizations
• Experience conducting Business Impact Analyses and developing recovery strategies
• Knowledge of BCP/DR frameworks and standards (ISO 22301, NIST SP 800-34, ISO 27001)
• Experience leading disaster recovery exercises and tabletop simulations
• Understanding of incident management and crisis communication protocols

Engineering & Automation

• Strong scripting skills (Python, Bash, PowerShell) for automation and orchestration
• Experience building CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure deployment and testing
• Ability to write clean, maintainable code with proper error handling and logging
• Understanding of configuration management tools (Ansible, Chef, Puppet)
• Experience with monitoring and observability platforms (Datadog, CloudWatch, Prometheus)

Preferred Qualifications:

• Professional certifications: CBCP, MBCP, ABCP, CISA, CRISC, or equivalent
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect or AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
• Certified Business Continuity Professional (CBCP) or Associate Business Continuity Professional (ABCP)
• Previous experience implementing BCP/DR capabilities from the ground up or through major transformation
• Knowledge of security incident response procedures and integration with DR processes
• Experience with disaster recovery in regulated industries (finance, healthcare, etc.)
• Understanding of ransomware recovery strategies and immutable backup architectures
• Experience with multi-region and multi-cloud recovery architectures
• Experience in SaaS or B2B technology companies

About Our Security Team:

You'll be joining a security organization that emphasizes automation, engineering-driven approaches, and systematic problem-solving. Our team operates at the intersection of security operations, detection engineering, incident response, and infrastructure security. We value practical solutions, measurable outcomes, and continuous improvement.

Reporting to the Director of Event Response you'll execute on strategic initiatives to operationalize mature BCP/DR capabilities that protect AlphaSense's mission-critical operations and support our commitment to customer trust. This role sits at the critical intersection of incident response and business continuity, ensuring our ability to respond to and recover from major disruptions.