Site Reliability Engineer Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity
Chicago, IL - USA
Job Summary
About Charles River Associates
For over 50 years Charles River Associates has been a premier consulting firm that offers employees a place to learn from a diverse group of consultants industry experts and academics. At CRA you will be exposed to leading minds who use economic financial and business analysis to solve complex world problems for an impressive roster of clients including major law firms Fortune 100 companies and government agencies. Through a collegial environment formal and informal training opportunities and a broad array of professional development resources your experience at CRA will open doors for you throughoutyour career.
The Information Technology (ITS) department at Charles River Associates is currently a team of more than 40 professionals dedicated to enhancing maintaining and developing the firms technology infrastructure and security. The team is comprised of four functions:
- Service Delivery & Telecom
- Enterprise Application Solutions
- Infrastructure Networking and Cloud Solutions
- Information Security
Information Technology staff are based in the Boston Chicago London Munich New York Oakland San Francisco College Station and Washington DC offices.
Mainly a Microsoft house CRA is looking to maximize the performance of our on-premise systems and hybrid infrastructure meaning experience with cloud technologies is essential for this role.
Position Overview
The IT Business Continuity Coordinator supports the firms operational resilience with a primary focus on IT service continuity and disaster recovery (DR) readiness (approximately 80%) and a secondary focus on coordinating business continuity planning with non-IT stakeholders (approximately 20%). This role partners closely with infrastructure security application and service delivery teams to maintain actionable recovery documentation validate recovery capabilities through testing and drive ongoing improvements through remediation tracking and lessons learned.
Key Responsibilities
- IT Service Continuity Documentation: Maintain and continuously improve IT service continuity and DR documentation including service recovery plans application recovery procedures and dependencies.
- DR Runbooks & Recovery Sequencing: Partner with infrastructure and application teams to document review and standardize DR runbooks (recovery steps prerequisites validation checks and recovery sequencing).
- Backup/Restore & Data Recovery Readiness: Coordinate evidence and periodic validation activities related to backups restores and data recovery procedures in collaboration with platform owners.
- Testing & Exercises (Technical and Tabletop): Plan and coordinate DR tests and resilience exercises including scope schedules participant communications success criteria evidence collection and after-action reporting.
- Issue Tracking & Continuous Improvement: Maintain remediation logs drive follow-through on action items and report status and risks to stakeholders; incorporate lessons learned into updated runbooks and plans.
- Operational Resilience Governance & Reporting: Track plan review cadence test completion and key metrics; support audit-ready evidence collection and risk/compliance requests related to IT resilience.
- Third-Party & Technology Dependency Coordination: Help assess IT resilience considerations for key vendors and dependencies (e.g. SaaS telecom data centers) and document contingency approaches with service owners.
- Incident Support & Recovery Communications: During disruptions support coordination of technical recovery status updates and stakeholder communications in partnership with IT incident management and leadership.
- Business Continuity Coordination (Limited Scope): Support business impact analysis inputs (critical processes contacts workarounds) and coordinate periodic awareness/training for non-IT plan owners as needed.
Relevant Skills & Experience
- Experience supporting IT service continuity and/or disaster recovery (DR) for enterprise services and applications including runbook maintenance and coordinating technical exercises
- Working knowledge of resilience concepts and metrics (RTO RPO) incident/change management and IT service management practices
- Ability to coordinate cross-functional IT stakeholders (infrastructure cloud network security applications) and manage timelines communications and documentation across multiple workstreams
- Strong documentation and analytical skills; able to produce clear runbooks test plans after-action reports and remediation tracking
- Familiarity with core IT platforms and enterprise services (identity networking virtualization backups Windows/Microsoft 365 cloud/SaaS) to understand recovery dependencies
- Comfort working with risk compliance and audit stakeholders; experience collecting evidence and supporting control attestations is a plus
- Exposure to business continuity activities (BIA inputs plan owner coordination tabletop facilitation) is helpful
Career Growth and Benefits
- CRAs robust skills development programs including a commitment to offering 100 hours of training annually through formal and informal programs encourage you to thrive as an individual and team member. Beginning with research and analysis skill building training continues with technical training presentation skills internal seminars and career mentoring and performance coaching from an assigned senior colleague. Additional leadership and collaboration opportunities exist through internal firm development activities.
- We offer a comprehensive total rewards program including a superior benefits package wellness programming to support physical mental emotional and financial well-being and in-house immigration support for foreign nationals and international business travelers.
Work Location Flexibility
CRA creates a work environment that enables our colleagues to benefit from being together in the office to best deliver on our promise of career growth mentorship and inclusivity. At the same time we recognize that individuals realize a range of benefits when working from home periodically. We currently expect that individuals spend at least 3 to 4 days a week working in the office (which may include traveling to another CRA office or to client meetings) with specific days determined in coordination with your practice or team.
Our Commitment to Equal Employment Opportunity
Charles River Associates is an equal opportunity employer (EOE). All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race color religion sex national origin age disability status as a protected veteran or any other protected characteristic under applicable law.
Salary and other compensation
A good-faith estimate of the annual base salary range for this position is $130000 - $150000. Stating pay within this range may vary based on factors such as education level experience skills geographic location market conditions and other qualifications of the successful candidate. This position may be eligible for additional bonus incentive compensation.
CRA offers a comprehensive benefits package subject to eligibility requirements which may include: medical dental and vision insurance; 401(k) retirement plan with employer match; life and disability insurance; paid time off (vacation sick leave holidays); paid parental leave; wellness programs and employee assistance resources; and commuter benefits.
Required Experience:
IC
About Company
Charles River Associates is a global consulting firm offering economic, financial, and strategic expertise to law firms, corporations, accounting firms, and governments.