Title: Enterprise Architect - Cyber Recovery
Duration: 09 Months
Location: Chicago, IL, Hybrid - onsite 3 days per week
Project Overview / Contractor's Role:
- The Senior Cyber Recovery Engineer is a hands-on technical leader responsible for designing, implementing, and continuously validating the organization's ability to recover critical systems and data in the wake of a cyber event.
- This role sits at the intersection of infrastructure engineering, cybersecurity, and regulatory compliance within a highly regulated financial services environment.
- The successful candidate has direct experience operating within financial institution recovery programs, engaging with banking regulators (OCC, FDIC, Federal Reserve, or equivalent), and executing recovery exercises within isolated
- recovery environments (IRE) and clean room configurations. This is not a theoretical role - we need someone who has run the drills, written the runbooks, and tested the assumptions.
Experience Level: Mid-Senior
Required Qualifications (Must Have):
- 10+ years of infrastructure, platform, or resilience engineering experience, with at least 4 years in a financial institution (bank, broker-dealer, asset manager, or equivalent regulated entity).
- Demonstrated hands-on experience implementing and testing cyber recovery in an Isolated Recovery Environment (IRE) or clean room - not just DR/BC planning.
- Direct experience engaging with financial regulators (OCC, FDIC, Federal Reserve, NYDFS, SEC, or FINRA) in the context of technology examinations or regulatory responses.
- Proficiency with enterprise backup and replication platforms: Cohesity, Rubrik, Zerto, Veeam, Commvault, or NetBackup.
- Working knowledge of IaC tooling (Terraform, Ansible) and scripting (Python, Bash, PowerShell) for recovery automation.
- Strong understanding of network segmentation, identity isolation, and zero-trust concepts as applied to clean room environments.
- Familiarity with ransomware TTPs, destructive malware incident response, and forensic triage in a recovery context.
- Experience with FFIEC guidance, NIST CSF, and/or DORA requirements as they pertain to operational resilience and recovery.
Preferred Qualifications (Nice to Have):
- Experience in a GSIB, SIFI, or Category I-III bank with heightened regulatory scrutiny.
- Certifications: CISSP, CISA, AWS/Azure Disaster Recovery specialty, or vendor-specific backup platform certifications.
- Exposure to DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act) implementation for EU-facing operations.
- Familiarity with SWIFT, FedWire, or CHIPS recovery considerations for payment system continuity.
- Experience with cyber recovery in hybrid cloud environments (AWS, Azure, or GCP) including cloud-based IRE architectures.
- Background in incident response or cyber threat intelligence with a recovery engineering lens.
Tasks & Responsibilities:
Isolated & Clean Room Recovery
- Design, build, and maintain the Isolated Recovery Environment (IRE) and clean room infrastructure used for cyber recovery exercises and declared events.
- Execute end-to-end recovery testing cycles, validating RTOs and RPOs for Tier-1 and Tier-2 critical applications.
- Develop and maintain recovery runbooks, playbooks, and automation scripts for clean room restoration of core banking systems, trading platforms, and data stores.
- Lead technical forensic validation procedures within the IRE to confirm system integrity prior to production re-entry.
Regulatory Engagement & Audit Readiness
- Serve as a subject matter expert during regulatory examinations, audits, and inquiry responses related to cyber recovery posture (e.g., OCC, FDIC, FFIEC, Federal Reserve, NYDFS).
- Translate regulatory guidance (FFIEC Cybersecurity Assessment Tool, NIST CSF, SR 20-24, DORA where applicable) into actionable recovery engineering requirements.
- Prepare evidence packages, technical narratives, and examination artifacts that demonstrate recovery capability maturity.
- Maintain continuous documentation of control effectiveness, test results, and remediation tracking aligned to regulatory expectations.
Recovery Architecture & Engineering
- Architect and operate air-gapped or logically isolated backup and replication pipelines using immutable storage technologies (e.g., Zerto, Cohesity, Rubrik, NetBackup, Veeam).
- Engineer network segmentation and identity isolation controls within the IRE to prevent lateral movement and re-infection risk during recovery.
- Integrate recovery automation into CI/CD and IaC pipelines using Terraform, Ansible, and scripting (Python/Bash) to ensure reproducible, auditable recovery environments.
- Collaborate with application owners, DBAs, and platform teams to validate application-layer recovery sequencing and dependencies.
Exercise Program & Continuous Improvement
- Own the cyber recovery exercise calendar; design tabletop, simulation, and full-failover scenarios including ransomware, destructive malware, and supply chain compromise.
- Lead post-exercise after action reviews (AARs); track findings to closure and drive measurable improvement in recovery capability.
- Benchmark recovery metrics (RTO, RPO, MTTR) against industry peers and regulatory expectations; report program health to CISO and executive leadership.
- Mentor junior engineers on recovery engineering practices, clean room protocols, and regulatory documentation standards.
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