Are you a resilience professional who thrives at the intersection of strategy and hands-on delivery? Do you want to shape how a leading global reinsurer prepares for, responds to, and recovers from disruptions? If so, this is your opportunity to make a real and lasting impact.
About the Role
As a Lead Operational Resilience Manager based in Madrid, you will be at the heart of evolving and embedding Swiss Re's Operational Resilience and Crisis Management capabilities across the organisation. This is a high-impact, senior role where strategic thinking meets practical execution — you'll partner with business leaders, challenge the status quo, and drive meaningful outcomes in a fast-moving, globally connected environment.
You won't just be maintaining frameworks — you'll be shaping them, testing them, and making them stronger.
Key Responsibilities
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Lead framework development: Own and continuously evolve the Operational Resilience & Crisis Management frameworks, ensuring alignment with organisational standards, regulatory expectations, and industry best practices
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Shape strategic direction: Contribute to the resilience roadmap, incorporating emerging risks, external trends, and regulatory developments to keep Swiss Re ahead of the curve
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Integrate protective intelligence: Leverage threat, geopolitical, security, and environmental indicators to inform scenario design, location and third-party risk considerations, and senior stakeholder briefings
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Partner with the business: Collaborate with business units and functions to strengthen resilience capabilities — including business services, dependencies, recovery strategies, and scenario planning
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Drive resilience testing: Own the end-to-end design, facilitation, and follow-through of resilience testing and scenario exercises, including accountability for remediation actions
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Challenge impact tolerances: Support and constructively challenge the business in defining and practically applying resilience-related impact tolerances in planning and decision-making
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Lead reporting and insights: Develop and maintain resilience dashboards and senior management updates that enable informed, timely decision-making
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Coordinate regulatory engagement: Ensure high-quality responses, clear narratives, and robust supporting evidence for regulatory reviews and internal assessments
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Strengthen third-party resilience: Support critical supplier considerations, concentration risk management, and ongoing monitoring of third-party resilience
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Align with technology teams: Collaborate closely with IT and cyber teams to ensure resilience priorities and dependencies are well-integrated
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Support incident management: Contribute actively during disruptive events — supporting triage, escalation, coordination, situational awareness, communications, and lessons learned
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Embed resilience cross-functionally: Drive collaboration across risk, compliance, operations, and technology to make resilience part of everyday practice
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Mentor and develop others: Provide direction, structure, and guidance to more junior colleagues, fostering a culture of learning and ownership
About the Team
The Operational Resilience team is a truly global function, with talented colleagues based across Zurich, Hyderabad, Bangalore, New York, Madrid, Bratislava, and London. Together, we lead the implementation and continuous evolution of Operational Resilience at Swiss Re — ensuring the organisation can remain effective and meet its commitments even during disruptions or crises.
We are a collaborative, forward-thinking team that combines deep expertise with a pragmatic, delivery-focused mindset. As part of the Madrid team, you'll be embedded in a vibrant local hub while contributing to a global agenda that matters. We're looking for an experienced and driven professional to play a key role in shaping and advancing this work across the organisation.
About You
You are a seasoned resilience professional who brings both the strategic perspective to shape frameworks and the hands-on drive to deliver results. You communicate with clarity and confidence, influence without authority, and take genuine ownership of outcomes. You're comfortable navigating complexity, engaging senior stakeholders, and working across cultures and functions in a fast-paced international environment.
We are looking for candidates who meet these requirements:
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6+ years of relevant experience in operational resilience, business continuity, and/or crisis management within complex organisations
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Demonstrated expertise in developing, enhancing, and challenging policies, standards, procedures, and guidance — with the ability to translate complex concepts into practical, actionable steps for diverse stakeholders
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Strong understanding of operational resilience frameworks, including critical business services, impact tolerances, and scenario testing methodologies
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Proven experience in designing and facilitating scenario testing or exercises, and driving remediation activities through to completion
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Demonstrated ability to engage and influence senior stakeholders, providing both strategic support and constructive challenge
These are additional nice to haves:
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Experience in financial services or similarly regulated industries
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Familiarity with European regulatory expectations, including DORA
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Experience with third-party risk management or supplier resilience programmes
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Knowledge of IT or cyber resilience concepts and their intersection with operational resilience
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Experience with data analytics and reporting tools such as Power BI
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Experience working in Agile or transformation environments
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Experience mentoring colleagues or coordinating small, cross-functional teams
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Advanced proficiency in MS Office (Excel, PowerPoint, Word)
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Fluent English communication skills, both written and spoken
For Spain, the base salary range for this position is between 60,000 EUR and 100,000 EUR for a full-time role.
The specific salary offered considers:
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The requirements, scope, complexity and responsibilities of the role
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The applicant's own profile including education/qualifications, expertise, specialisation, skills and experience
In the situation where you do not meet all the requirements or you significantly exceed these, the offered salary may be below or above the advertised range. In addition to your base salary, you may be eligible for additional rewards and benefits including an attractive performance-based annual bonus.
Why This Role?
This is a rare opportunity to work at the centre of a critical and rapidly evolving discipline within a leading global organisation. You'll have the platform to shape how Operational Resilience is understood and embedded across Swiss Re, influence both strategy and day-to-day practice, and collaborate with senior leaders across the business. If you're looking for a role where your expertise genuinely matters — this is it.
Our company has a hybrid work model where the expectation is that you will be in the office at least three days per week.
About Swiss Re
Swiss Re is one of the world’s leading providers of reinsurance, insurance and other forms of insurance-based risk transfer, working to make the world more resilient. We anticipate and manage a wide variety of risks, from natural catastrophes and climate change to cybercrime. Combining experience with creative thinking and cutting-edge expertise, we create new opportunities and solutions for our clients. This is possible thanks to the collaboration of more than 15,000 employees across the world.
Our success depends on our ability to build an inclusive culture encouraging fresh perspectives and innovative thinking. We embrace a workplace where everyone has equal opportunities to thrive and develop professionally regardless of their age, gender, race, ethnicity, gender identity and/or expression, sexual orientation, physical or mental ability, skillset, thought or other characteristics. In our inclusive and flexible environment everyone can bring their authentic selves to work and their passion for sustainability.
If you are an experienced professional returning to the workforce after a career break, we encourage you to apply for open positions that match your skills and experience.
We may use AI-powered tools to support the review and evaluation of applications for this position. These tools provide additional insights to our recruitment teams, but all hiring decisions are carefully reviewed and made by people. To learn more about how we use AI in recruitment and how we handle your personal data, please review our Data Privacy Statement before applying.
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