Disaster Recovery Planners Job Description

Disaster Recovery Planners Job Profile and Description

The threat is always there that your data center housing a centralized server farm and networking facilities can be disabled in one blow, whether from natural or man-made catastrophe.  An unsavory task, but every large company that values information has disaster recovery or business recovery plans that can be mobilized within minutes to restore a data and network center in cases such threats become real.  Hence, their IT departments have a section devoted almost exclusively with planning for this event and at the heart of this activity is the Disaster Recovery Planner or Specialist.  He/she works in collaboration with the IT System Security section.

Disaster Recovery Planners Duties and Responsibilities

• Identify potential risks and perform risk analysis on various potential threats to the corporate data center
• Analyze impact on, and risk to, essential business functions or information systems to identify acceptable recovery time periods and resource requirements.
• Discover opportunities for strategic development or alleviation of business disruption and other risks caused by regulatory, business, or industry-specific change initiatives.
• Identify mission critical systems for progressive prioritization to be restored in the event of a catastrophe immobilizing the data and network operating centers
• Develop disaster recovery plans for identified mission critical application system and provide the back up infrastructure and budgets to support such plans
• Define the minimum and tolerable system uptimes in the event of a disaster

Disaster Recovery Planners Skills and Specifications

• Must have analytical mind to spot and evaluate risk factors
• Must have excellent oral and written communications skills to develop and articulate and present disaster recovery plans and procedures
• Must have computer literacy
• Must be able to work long hours and in extreme pressure during emergency situations and can meat deadlines

Disaster Recovery Planners Education and Qualifications

• A college degree in Computer Science, IT Management,  Computer Technology or related field is basic
• 2-3 years experience in IT operations, software development or planning is as advantage

Disaster Recovery Planners Salary

The median annual salary for IT Planners including Disaster Recovery Planners stood at $60,700 in 2009.  A wide latitude from lowest to highest salary can be expected based on the nature and size of the business and location.  Needless to say, the larger and scope of a business than needs to be backed up, the higher the median salary.