Our Purpose
Mastercard powers economies and empowers people in 200+ countries and territories worldwide. Together with our customers, we’re helping build a sustainable economy where everyone can prosper. We support a wide range of digital payments choices, making transactions secure, simple, smart and accessible. Our technology and innovation, partnerships and networks combine to deliver a unique set of products and services that help people, businesses and governments realize their greatest potential.
Title and Summary
Manager, Operational Resilience
This is an exciting opportunity to be part of the Chief Operating Office in Vocalink Limited, a Mastercard business, which provides Critical National Infrastructure to the UK.
• Vocalink is the UK company that enables the payments of 90% of salaries, 70% of utility bills, most ATM transactions and every cheque cleared in the UK.
• We provide services to over 60 million citizens, and the UK private, public and third sectors.
• In 2024, we processed 14 billion transactions, with a value of more than £10 trillion.
• Vocalink products include Bacs Direct Credits, Bacs Direct Debits, Faster Payments, the LINK ATM network for cash withdrawals, and the Image Clearing Service (ICS) that supports cheque clearing.
Operational Resilience
Vocalink complies with the Bank of England’s requirements on Operational Resilience. The Bank defines operational resilience as ‘the ability of Financial Market Infrastructures (FMIs) and the sector as a whole to prevent, respond to, recover and learn from operational disruptions’ with a particular focus for Vocalink on protecting financial stability, preventing threats to the transfer of payments, and enabling the safety and efficiency of the Recognised Payment Service Operators.
In Vocalink, the Chief Operating Office has overall accountability for the Operational Resilience Framework including policies and procedures, working closely with the Important Business Services owners in the Product and Commercial Services teams, as well as “Pillar” owners across Technology, Security, Data, Facilities, People and Third Parties.
The team also work closely with key stakeholders across the financial services industry and particularly the Recognised Payment Service Operators.
Overview of Role
The Manager, Operational Resilience will play a critical role in ensuring Vocalink manages the delivery plans it has in place for continuously improving the resilience of our critical payments services, has appropriate governance in place, aligns to all Recognised Payment Services Operator’s contractual obligations and provides high-quality briefing packs to senior leadership.
This role will report to the Vice President Operational Resilience, who is responsible for the Operational Resilience Framework, policy and methodologies and embedding the Target Operating Model across Vocalink.
In this role, you will be accountable for:
• Development of all Board and Executive level packs, ensuring a high-quality narrative suitable to a senior audience
• Provide project management support across the Operational Resilience Team Plan, Maturity Model, Lessons Learnt and any subsequent change activity, to ensure actions are on track, or are escalated through governance.
• Managing all contractual requirements set out in the Operational Resilience, Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery schedules in place with the Recognised Payments Service Operators tracking delivery of requirements and ensuring activity is aligned with team plan and resourcing
• Leading Operational Resilience governance ensuring a high-quality meeting pack is provided in sufficient time to attendees, that decisions required are clear, and ensuring the meetings sit appropriately within other governance requirements.
• Owning the Terms of Reference for key governance Fora, leading the annual review with key stakeholders such as Risk, Compliance and Legal and ensuring governance is aligned with requirements within the Operational Resilience strategy and operating model
• Maintaining oversight of all team-owned Operational Resilience risks and controls, highlighting actions that need addressing, controls that need testing etc and updating team members accordingly.
• Running the Operational Resilience team meetings to ensure updates are provided on team plans, that documents requiring governance approvals are shared appropriately, and maintaining a lens on future actions.
You will need to:
• Build effective and influential relationships with key stakeholders across Vocalink, including Legal and Compliance
• Work with the Risk team who provide oversight and check and challenge to Operational Resilience across Vocalink.
About You
You are likely to have the following:
• Experience: a good understanding of Operational Resilience in financial services.
• Passion for payments and an understanding of solutions.
• Process: an eye for detail and an understanding of process.
• Communication: excellent written and verbal communication skills
• People leadership: the ability to influence in a matrix environment
• Skills and attributes:
o An ability to deal with ambiguity, complexity and competing priorities and to quickly assess, simplify and articulate challenges, solutions and recommendations.
o An ability to get things done, and to see the bigger picture.
o An ability to work under pressure to meet deadlines and react quickly to changing priorities.
o A proven relationship builder with strong influencing skills who can interact effectively with internal and external stakeholders at all levels.
o A proactive self-starter who has a passion for learning, doing and making a difference.
o A strong team player and collaborator with a team-first ethos and low ego.
o Commercial and business acumen.
o Excellent and engaging oral, written and presentational skills.
o A role model for the Mastercard Way.
Corporate Security Responsibility
All activities involving access to Mastercard assets, information, and networks comes with an inherent risk to the organization and, therefore, it is expected that every person working for, or on behalf of, Mastercard is responsible for information security and must:
Abide by Mastercard’s security policies and practices;
Ensure the confidentiality and integrity of the information being accessed;
Report any suspected information security violation or breach, and
Complete all periodic mandatory security trainings in accordance with Mastercard’s guidelines.