Head of Operational Resilience

TEAM OVERVIEW

The Global Security & Operational Resilience team provides 24/7 support across the Firm’s global operations, helping protect people, assets, and the continuity of critical business services. The ~80-member global team drives readiness through integrated physical security and investigations, threat and intelligence monitoring, crisis management, and enterprise operational resilience planning, exercising, and response.

POSITION SUMMARY

KKR is seeking a principal-level Head of Operational Resilience to lead the design, implementation, and execution of the firm’s global Operational Resilience program. Reporting to the Head of Security and Operational Resilience, this role is responsible for driving accountability and adherence to impact tolerance and recovery objectives during severe and plausible disruption by embedding requirements into day-to-day operations, operating effective controls, and leading remediation efforts to closure.

This role partners closely with Technology, Business leadership, Enterprise Risk Management, Compliance, Vendor management, Human Capital, and Internal Audit to maintain alignment with client, investor, and regulatory expectations and enterprise risk standards.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Key responsibilities include:

• Leadership & Operating Model
• Build, mentor, and lead a high-performing operational resilience team.
• Influence cross-functional stakeholders to deliver enterprise resilience outcomes and measurable program maturity.
• Program Ownership & Roadmap
• Own and operate KKR’s Operational Resilience program and multi-year roadmap, including associated procedures, playbooks, and evidence management.
• Establish and maintain governance routines to track progress, escalate risks, and drive timely decision-making.
• Important Business Services & Impact Tolerances
• Identify, maintain, and periodically review the inventory of Important Business Services (IBS) and support dependencies across people, processes, technology, data, facilities, and third parties.
• Define, document, and operationalize IBS impact tolerances with business leaders; ensure tolerances are measurable, actionable, and embedded in operating procedures and controls.
• Scenario Testing & Exercising
• Design and execute severe but plausible scenario testing and resilience exercises to validate the ability to remain within impact tolerances and recovery time objectives.
• Document outcomes, lessons learned, and resulting control enhancements; ensure improvements are implemented and sustained.
• Business Continuity Management
• Own and oversee the Business Continuity Management (BCM) program, including plan development, certification, governance, training/awareness, testing/exercises, and event execution.
• Control Effectiveness & Remediation
• Identify resilience gaps and drive remediation to closure with clear accountability, milestones, and risk transparency.
• Track remediation progress through governance forums and management reporting.
• Integrated Response & Recovery
• Coordinate resilience integration across crisis management, cyber incident response, technology disaster recovery, and physical security response to enable a unified enterprise response and recovery capability.
• Metrics, Reporting & Communication
• Establish and maintain resilience KPIs/KRIs, dashboards, and management reporting to communicate posture, key risks, and remediation status to senior leadership.
• Lead preparedness, communications, and awareness initiatives to strengthen resilience culture and improve adoption of planning and control requirements across global functions.
• Audit, Risk, and Regulatory Support
• Support regulatory reviews, risk assessments, and internal/external audits by providing timely documentation, evidence, and program narratives.

QUALIFICATIONS

• 10+ years of experience in operational resilience, business continuity, enterprise risk, or related disciplines; experience in financial services or similarly regulated environments preferred.
• Demonstrated experience leading enterprise-level resilience initiatives and driving cross-functional delivery in a global organization.
• Strong understanding of global regulatory expectations and industry standards (e.g., Basel, ISO 22301, NIST, PRA/FCA or comparable).
• Experience engaging with senior leadership during disruption events and managing complex stakeholder environments.
• Sector knowledge/experience in Insurance, Asset Management, Capital Markets, and Structuring processes.

CRITICAL COMPETENCIES FOR SUCCESS

• Executive presence with the ability to communicate resilience posture, trade-offs, and decisions clearly to senior leaders.
• Strong stakeholder management and influence across Technology, business functions, and control partners (ERM, Compliance, Audit).
• Program and change leadership: ability to build roadmaps, drive adoption, and deliver measurable outcomes across a global organization.
• Analytical rigor and diligence; ability to translate complex dependencies into practical controls and recovery strategies.
• Decisive leadership under pressure, including crisis response coordination and effective prioritization during disruption events.
• Strong writing and documentation capability; comfortable producing defensible evidence for audits and regulatory reviews.
• Continuous improvement orientation, including process enhancement, tooling modernization, and operational discipline.

 

 

 

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