Disaster Recovery Specialist - Hay 16

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Albert Heijn is a renowned supermarket chain that has been serving customers across the Netherlands for over 130 years. Founded in 1887 by Albert Heijn, the company has grown to become one of the most trusted and beloved grocery retailers in the country. With a commitment to quality, convenience, and customer satisfaction, Albert Heijn has become an integral part of daily life in the Netherlands.

Albert Heijn is accelerating in becoming a Food & Tech company. That is where AH Technology comes into the picture. With a focus on Data, Digital and Tech, we at Albert Heijn strive to deliver high-quality products where technology plays an important role.

Your new team and office

We are looking for an experienced and entrepreneurial Disaster Recovery Specialist to join our multidisciplinary Reliability team.

In this role, you will work with stakeholders across technology, security, operations, compliance, and business teams to strengthen resilience and recovery capabilities. You will drive initiatives end-to-end, develop runbooks and playbooks, lead recovery exercises and simulations, support DR-aware system design, and continuously improve our resilience posture. You will also act as a subject matter expert during audits and regulatory assessments.

This is a hands-on role for someone who enjoys taking ownership, building programs from the ground up, and delivering practical improvements that make a real impact.

What will you do?

DR Strategy & Runbook

• Support PO in defining the company-wide DR strategy, including scope, objectives, RTO/RPO targets, and governance.
• Author and maintain the DR runbook covering failure scenarios, recovery procedures, communication chains, and escalation paths.
• Lead tabletop exercises and live failover drills; document results and drive remediation.
• Establish a continuous improvement cycle: identify gaps, prioritize fixes, and track resolution.

Business Continuity & Compliance

• Conduct Business Impact Analyses (BIA) across business units to quantify risk and inform DR priorities.
• Translate compliance requirements (SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, etc.) into testable DR controls.
• Produce audit-ready evidence packages (test records, recovery logs, exception reports) for internal and external assessors.
• Maintain a stakeholder engagement cadence: check-ins with business owners to keep continuity requirements current.

Engineering & Tooling

• Collaborate with infrastructure and platform engineering on DR-resilient architecture designs (multi-region, active-active/active-passive, data replication).
• Evaluate, design, and help build internal DR tooling — runbook automation, failover orchestration, chaos engineering integrations.
• Define observability standards for DR: dashboards, alerting thresholds, and runbook-trigger conditions.

What we offer. 

At Albert Heijn we aim to grow, and this is only possible if you grow along with us. As we work together to build our brand and your career, you can count on (based on 40 hours per week): 

• An annual salary up to 81K including holiday allowance and a flexible bonus. Depending on your experience;   
• A minimum of 20 days paid vacation, optionally 12.5 days extra. Do you want to take that extra time off, or would you rather convert the extra days into discounts or sell them for cash? You’re the end boss!;  
• Flexible working hours; 
• Access to a challenging training curriculum – AH Tech Academy;  
• An excellent pension plan where we as an employer contribute 4,5 more than you as an employee;  
• A travel allowance or a NS-business card for traveling to and from Zaandam by train; 
• Attractive discounts on various insurance policies; 
• 10% staff discount on groceries in all Albert Heijn stores, to a maximum of €300 per year;
• A free Mijn Albert Heijn Premium membership.

The recipe for maximum impact.

• At least 3 years of continuous experience in Business Continuity, Disaster Recovery, Crisis Management, Operational Resilience, or a related field.
• Proven track record of implementing and improving resilience programs at scale.
• Strong understanding of resilience concepts, including RTO, RPO, MTD, and MBCO.
• Experience designing and executing testing and exercising programs, including tabletop exercises, simulations, and recovery tests.
• Hands-on experience with compliance frameworks that include resilience and DR controls (e.g., ISO 22301, SOC 2 Type II, NIST SP 800-34, or equivalent).
• Strong documentation skills, including developing policies, runbooks, playbooks, procedures, and recovery plans.
• Excellent stakeholder management, communication, and facilitation skills.
• Ability to work independently, take ownership, and drive initiatives from idea to implementation.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to navigate complex environments and competing priorities.
• Experience working in technology-driven organizations is preferred.
  
  

Nice to Have

• Experience building or contributing to Disaster Recovery automation tooling.

We’re Albert Heijn, food retail reinventors. 🚀 
Albert Heijn goes way back. More than 135 years, to be exact. So for millions of people, food shopping is synonymous with the Albert Heijn brand. We didn’t achieve this with a complacent, ‘hey, if it works today, it’ll work tomorrow’ approach, but by continually rethinking our propositions and staying plugged in to customer demands. More than 125,000 colleagues? Check. Over 1,250 stores in the Netherlands and Flanders? Check. The leading online food retail platform? Check, we build, run and love it.   

Together we make eating better the easy choice. For everyone. 

The world around us has changed, and significantly at that. These changes have impact on the lives of our customers, colleagues and partners. And therefore, also on Albert Heijn. We’re moving towards a new world with new opportunities and challenges. Albert Heijn wants more people to eat fresher, healthier and more sustainable food. Eating brings us together, keeps us healthier and contributes positively to the world. Our mission is: Together we make eating better the easy choice. For everyone. 

Albert Heijn the Netherlands is B Corp certified. This underscores our purpose, through which we aim to contribute to a healthier, more social, and sustainable society. B Corp certification is a designation that a business is meeting high standards of verified performance, accountability and transparency. 

Ready to contribute to our mission? 

Do you want to play an active role in changing the food retail landscape as we know it? Then hop on board and join us on our expedition. Would you like to learn more first, before you apply to Albert Heijn? We’re happy to tell you everything about this vacancy! An assessment might be part of our selection process. 

Since we’ll start the selection interviews right away, we encourage you to apply as soon as possible.

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