Johannesburg: DR/Failover Architect posted by Africonology

About the Role

The Disaster Recovery and Failover Architect is responsible for designing, implementing, and maintaining robust disaster recovery and failover strategies to ensure business continuity within the banking and finance sector. This role involves analysing existing infrastructure, identifying potential risks, developing failover architectures, and collaborating with multiple stakeholders to guarantee that critical systems remain operational during incidents or outages.

Key Responsibilities

• RPO/RTO design, rollback and DR drills.
• Design and develop disaster recovery and failover strategies aligned with business continuity requirements and regulatory standards.
• Conduct risk assessments and business impact analyses to identify critical applications, data, and infrastructure components.
• Evaluate current disaster recovery plans and failover mechanisms, recommending improvements to enhance resilience and recovery time objectives.
• Collaborate with infrastructure, application, and security teams to implement failover architectures and disaster recovery solutions.
• Develop and maintain comprehensive documentation, including disaster recovery plans, failover procedures, and recovery runbooks.
• Lead disaster recovery testing and failover exercises to validate processes and systems, analysing outcomes and implementing corrective actions.
• Provide technical guidance on disaster recovery technologies such as replication, backup, clustering, and cloud-based solutions.
• Ensure compliance with relevant regulatory requirements and internal policies related to disaster recovery and business continuity.
• Monitor emerging trends and technologies in disaster recovery and failover architectures, recommending adoption where appropriate.
• Work closely with vendors and third-party service providers to support disaster recovery capabilities and failover infrastructure.

Requirements

• Professional qualifications in information technology, computer science, or related disciplines.
• Relevant certifications in disaster recovery, business continuity, or architecture (for example, Certified Business Continuity Professional or equivalent) are highly desirable.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or higher in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, or a comparable field.

Experience

• A minimum of five years’ experience in disaster recovery, failover architecture, or business continuity within a complex IT environment.
• Proven experience working in the banking, finance, or similarly regulated industries.
• Demonstrable experience in designing and implementing failover and disaster recovery solutions for large-scale systems.
• Experience conducting disaster recovery tests and exercises, including post-test analysis and improvement planning.

Knowledge and Skills

• Resilience, backups, replication.
• Strong understanding of disaster recovery methodologies, architecture principles, and business continuity frameworks.
• In-depth knowledge of infrastructure components including servers, storage, networking, virtualisation, and cloud platforms.
• Familiarity with replication technologies, backup solutions, clustering, and failover mechanisms.
• Ability to analyse complex systems and identify single points of failure or risks.
• Excellent communication and documentation skills, with the capability to produce clear, concise plans and reports.
• Competence in project management and stakeholder engagement.
• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to work independently or within multi-disciplinary teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Advanced certifications related to cloud technologies, such as AWS Certified Solutions Architect or Microsoft Azure certifications.
• Experience with regulatory compliance frameworks such as Basel III, GDPR, or local financial sector regulations.
• Knowledge of scripting or automation tools to support disaster recovery processes.
• Experience working within agile or DevOps environments.

Working Conditions

• Contract position based in Johannesburg with full-time working hours.
• May require occasional availability outside regular hours for disaster recovery testing, incident response, or urgent failover operations.
• Work primarily takes place in an office environment, with potential for remote work depending on organisational policies.
• Exposure to fast-paced, deadline-driven projects within a regulated financial services setting.