Disaster Recovery Specialist

Senior Disaster Recovery & Backup Engineer
Remote (must be willing to travel a few times per year to customer sites)
Highly Regulated / Public Sector-Focused SaaS Platform
!!!Must be a US Citizen!!
This is slated as a 6-month- contract to hire (no third parties)

We’re partnering with a well-established, mission-critical software company operating in highly regulated environments to hire a deeply technical Disaster Recovery (DR) & Backup Engineer.
This is not a checkbox DR role — this person will own and architect resilience across complex cloud environments and must be comfortable operating at both hands-on engineering depth and executive-facing visibility.
The ideal candidate has experience supporting government, public sector, or similarly regulated environments (financial services, healthcare, etc.) and understands the rigor required for compliance, uptime, and auditability.
What You’ll Do
Own Disaster Recovery Strategy End-to-End
Architect and implement enterprise-grade DR and backup solutions across cloud-native environments
Define and enforce RPO/RTO targets tied to SLAs and regulatory requirements
Design multi-region and multi-account DR strategies (pilot light, warm standby, active/passive, etc.)
Align systems with NIST 800-53 and other regulatory frameworks
Hands-On Cloud Engineering
Build and manage backup/recovery solutions across:
AWS (EC2, EBS, RDS, S3, DynamoDB, etc.)
Cross-region replication, snapshots, and failover strategies
Implement Infrastructure as Code (Terraform preferred) for DR automation
Ensure encryption, security, and resilience across all recovery systems
Testing, Validation & Automation
Lead full-scale DR exercises (simulated + live failovers)
Continuously validate backup integrity through restore testing
Build and maintain runbooks, playbooks, and SOPs
Drive automation and continuous improvement across DR processes
Customer & Stakeholder Engagement
Act as the technical SME for DR posture across customers, auditors, and executives
Translate complex recovery strategies into business impact and risk language
Support audits, RFPs, and regulatory reviews
What We’re Looking For
Core Experience
7+ years in Disaster Recovery, Backup, or Business Continuity engineering
Proven experience designing DR solutions in AWS (required)
Exposure to Azure and/or GCP is a strong plus
Background supporting government, public sector, or highly regulated environments is strongly preferred
Technical Depth
Deep expertise in:
Backup/recovery architectures (snapshot + replication-based)
Cross-region / cross-account DR strategies
AWS services (EC2, RDS, S3, DynamoDB, IAM, CloudWatch)
Strong experience with Terraform or other IaC tools
Solid understanding of networking + security fundamentals (VPCs, VPNs, encryption, IAM)
Regulatory & Compliance Mindset
Experience working within frameworks like:
NIST 800-53
CJIS, FedRAMP, SOC 2, or ISO 27001
Comfortable operating in audit-heavy, compliance-driven environments
Professional Profile
Highly technical, hands-on engineer — not just strategy
Able to operate calmly in high-pressure outage/recovery scenarios
Strong communicator with ability to engage executive stakeholders
What Success Looks Like
DR processes are fully tested, automated, and audit-ready
Recovery objectives are consistently met and defensible
Systems are built with resilience as a core engineering discipline
Leadership and customers have high confidence in recovery posture
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