Resilience Testing Lead

Job Description

We are a global investment company that helps clients and customers to plan, save and invest for the future. By doing so, we enable our clients and customers to be better investors. Strengthening talent and culture is one of our strategic priorities. We strive to make abrdn a great place to work so that we can attract and retain the industry’s best talent. Our people put our stakeholders at the heart of everything they do by helping us to make a positive difference to the lives of our clients, customers, colleagues, shareholders and society.

abrdn comprises three businesses, Investments, Adviser and interactive investor (ii), each of which focuses on meeting and adapting to our clients’ evolving needs.

1. Investments manages £368bn of client assets, offering investment capabilities built on the strength of our insights from wide-ranging research, worldwide investment expertise and local market knowledge.
2. Adviser provides financial planning solutions and technology to over half of the UK’s financial advisers, enabling them to create value for their businesses and clients.
3. ii, the UK’s second-largest direct-to-consumer investment platform, helps over 430,000 individual customers to plan, save and invest in the way that works best for them.

About The Department

The Security, Resilience & Protection Department at abrdn provides expertise to enable the entire company to operate safely and securely. This department plays a crucial role in safeguarding the operational resilience of our global operations.

About The Role

The Resilience Testing Lead will play a key role within the Operational Resilience Team. This role is accountable for implementing, managing, and developing abrdn's operational resilience testing framework. You will apply your management, analytical, process, and project management skills to ensure alignment with policy, certification, regulatory, and client requirements.

Key Responsibilities

1. Manage and deliver regular testing of all components of the Operational Resilience and DORA programme, conducting detailed analysis of results.
2. Maintain a schedule of resilience tests, and ensure lessons learned and vulnerability logs are consistently updated.
3. Manage local and major incidents, supporting collaborators during crisis-level events, and ensuring that impacts to people, processes, clients, and shareholders are mitigated.
4. Conduct analysis to find opportunities to mitigate risks, ensuring compliance with ISO22301, client, and regulatory obligations.
5. Lead policy, risk, and compliance activities, including control self-assessments and risk tracking.
6. Provide regular updates to Operational Resilience Business Partners and contribute to internal and external audits, ensuring all compliance requirements are met.
7. Promote global awareness of the Operational Resilience policy, framework, and standards, leading specific testing projects as required.

About The Candidate

The ideal candidate will possess the following:

1. Proven experience in coordinating and facilitating test exercises, with a focus on operational resilience.
2. Strong knowledge of control and risk management processes, with the ability to make informed risk judgements.
3. Excellent planning, organisation, and communication skills, with a proven ability to build relationships and trust across the organisation.
4. Experience in report writing up to senior management level.
5. People development skills, with the ability to manage resilience SMEs and collaborate across teams.

We are proud to be a Disability Confident Committed employer. If you have a disability and would like to apply to one of our UK roles under the Disability Confident Scheme, please notify us by completing the relevant section in our candidate questionnaire. One of our team will reach out to support you through your application process.

Our Benefits

There's more to working life than coming home with a good salary. We have an environment where you can learn, get involved and be supported.

When you join us, your reward will be one of the best around. This includes 40 days’ annual leave, a 16% employer pension contribution, a discretionary performance-based bonus (where applicable), private healthcare and a range of flexible benefits – including gym discounts, season ticket loans and access to an employee discount portal.

Our business

Enabling our clients to be better investors drives everything we do. Our business is structured around three distinct areas – our vectors of growth – focused on our clients’ changing needs.

An inclusive way of working

Whatever way you like to work, if you have the talent and commitment to join our team, we’d like to hear from you.

At abrdn we’ve adopted a ‘blended working’ approach. This approach combines the benefits of face-to-face collaboration, coaching and connecting in our offices with the flexibility of working from home. It enables colleagues to find a balance that works for their roles, their teams, our clients and our business.

An inclusive culture, where diverse perspectives drive our actions, is at the core of who we are and what we do. If you need assistance with your application, or a reasonable adjustment to your interview arrangements – for example, because you are neurodivergent, or have a physical, sensory, cognitive, mental, visible or invisible disability – please let us know and we’ll be happy to help.

We’re committed to providing an inclusive workplace where all forms of difference are valued and which is free from any form of unfair or unlawful treatment. We define diversity in its broadest sense – this includes but is not limited to our diversity of educational and professional backgrounds, experience, cognitive and neurodiversity, age, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, religion or belief and ethnicity and geographical provenance. We support a culture that values meritocracy, fairness and transparency and welcomes enquiries from everyone.

If you need assistance or an adjustment due to a disability please let us know as part of your application and we will assist.