Backup & Recovery Services Manager

What you will be doing? 

The Backup & Recovery Services Manager is responsible for leading, mentoring, and managing the team accountable for the delivery, operational excellence, and continual improvement of backup, recovery, and disaster recovery products and services.

This is a manager-first role with strong technical backup and recovery capability. It provides service ownership, operational governance, capacity and infrastructure oversight, budget input, vendor engagement, and subject matter expertise across all backup and recovery-related services and customer queries.

Service Leadership & Operational Management
•    Take ownership of backup, recovery, and disaster recovery products and services under the remit of the Recovery Services team
•    Ensure backup and disaster recovery services are maintained through monitoring, regular backup checks, service improvement, and platform development practices
•    Ensure incidents, service requests, and operational tickets are managed in ServiceNow or the appropriate ITSM platform within agreed SLAs
•    Act as a point of escalation for incidents, service requests, and backup/recovery-related queries
•    Ensure ITSM processes are adhered to, including change, incident, problem, and capacity management
•    Lead problem management activities including root cause analysis, post-incident reviews, and service improvement actions
•    Drive the implementation, maintenance, and continual improvement of Standard Operating Procedures and operational process documentation
•    Ensure security practices are implemented, maintained, and reviewed across all assigned services
•    Ensure recovery exercises, service audits, and disaster recovery testing are planned, executed, and documented on agreed cycles
•    Own and support activation processes for customer recovery or continuity services when required

People Leadership & Team Management
•    Lead, mentor, coach, and support team members in their daily activities, including performance management, development planning, and capability uplift
•    Set clear role expectations, performance objectives, and annual review outcomes for team members
•    Manage team resourcing, workload allocation, roster coverage, and project oversight to ensure service and customer commitments are met
•    Approve timesheets and ensure team time recording is accurate and aligned to business requirements
•    Drive a culture of ownership, accountability, knowledge sharing, operational excellence, and continuous improvement
•    Ensure succession and contingency plans are in place for critical skills, services, and key operational roles
•    Ensure team members are trained on relevant services, tools, processes, security practices, and customer support expectations
•    Ensure health and safety practices are adhered to and support a positive workplace culture aligned to company values

Capacity, Infrastructure & Service Performance
•    Oversee capacity and infrastructure management for backup and recovery platforms, including utilisation, growth, performance, and scalability metrics
•    Ensure capacity reporting supports sales demand, customer onboarding, service growth, budget forecasting, and future capital planning
•    Ensure infrastructure supporting assigned services is monitored, maintained, and kept in a ready state for customer use
•    Identify proactive monitoring and tooling improvements that enhance operational efficiency, service availability, and customer outcomes
•    Contribute to service roadmaps covering lifecycle management, upgrades, functionality improvements, platform enhancements, and infrastructure refresh activities

Customer & Stakeholder Management
•    Engage with customers where required to provide confidence in the quality, reliability, and recoverability of services
•    Provide subject matter expertise for customer inquiries, escalations, service reviews, and backup/recovery solution discussions
•    Work collaboratively with internal stakeholders across sales, architecture, operations, and service delivery to ensure consistent service outcomes
•    Actively identify opportunities to improve customer experience, reporting, service quality, and product/service offerings
•    Represent the team professionally and instil confidence with internal stakeholders and customers

Vendor, Supplier & Procurement Management
•    Establish and maintain effective vendor and supplier relationships, including regular engagement with key backup and recovery vendors such as Veeam
•    Coordinate vendor meetings, technical discussions, service improvement activities, and escalation pathways where required
•    Obtain quotes, facilitate ordering, and raise purchase orders for licence, hardware, support, and renewal requirements
•    Track upcoming renewals and ensure procurement activities align with service, budget, and operational requirements

Governance, Reporting & Financial Management
•    Identify and communicate risks to services, record them in the risk register, and work with management to prioritise and action remediation
•    Lead Recovery Services adherence to change enablement and governance processes
•    Review and approve changes occurring within assigned services, ensuring quality, risk, and customer impact are appropriately considered
•    Manage expense budgets and contribute to periodic forecasts for Backup and Recovery services
•    Provide budget forecasting input for licence renewals, hardware refresh, support renewals, capacity expansion, and future capital expenditure
•    Contribute to monthly reporting for assigned services, including utilisation, growth, capacity, performance, risk, and service improvement metrics

Product, Technical & Service Improvement
•    Provide technical and operational input into solutions, service architecture, product development, and customer design discussions
•    Contribute subject matter expertise to research and development of new backup, recovery, storage, cloud, and disaster recovery services
•    Recommend improvements to processes, systems, services, documentation, and tools
•    Create, update, and review process, technical, and operational documentation on agreed cycles, including technical specifications, SOPs, and recovery plans
•    Maintain awareness of technology developments relevant to backup, recovery, disaster recovery, virtualisation, cloud, storage, and infrastructure services

On-Call & General Duties
•    Participate in the on-call roster and perform on-call duties in accordance with company policy
•    Maintain a valid full driver’s licence where the role requires site attendance or operational travel
•    Undertake additional duties as required by the business.

What will make you successful? 

• Essential

  • 5+ years of technical experience across infrastructure, Windows Server, backup/recovery, disaster recovery, virtualisation, or managed services environments
  • 3+ years of people leadership or team management experience, including coaching, performance management, resource allocation, and service delivery oversight
  • Proven experience managing backup and disaster recovery solutions for customers, including operational support, recovery planning, and service improvement
  • Strong working knowledge of enterprise backup and recovery platforms, preferably including Veeam or comparable technologies
  • Experience with ITSM processes and tools including ServiceNow, change enablement, incident, problem, and capacity management
  • Strong understanding of Microsoft Windows Server and the broader application stack
  • Working knowledge of virtualisation platforms such as VMware vSphere, vCloud Director, and/or Hyper-V
  • Foundational understanding of networking including TCP/IP, DHCP, DNS, routing, VLANs, and firewall/security considerations
  • Exposure to storage platforms, server hardware, and infrastructure monitoring/management tools
  • Commercial awareness including budgeting, forecasting, vendor engagement, quoting, and purchase order processes
  • Strong documentation, reporting, stakeholder engagement, and customer communication skills