Product GRC SME

What you’ll do as a GRC SME at Vanta

• Build and maintain compliance frameworks - Lead the creation, enhancement, and lifecycle management of controls, evidence requirements, and implementation guidance for standards such as SOC 2, ISO/IEC 27001 & 27701, HIPAA, PCI DSS, NIST CSF, NIST SP 800-53, and regional regulations (e.g., GDPR/CCPA). Author clear control rationales, acceptance criteria, and customer-facing guidance.
• Design crosswalks and mappings (framework‑agnostic) - Create and steward an internal common‑control approach informed by industry catalogs (e.g., SCF, UCF, or similar). Maintain bidirectional crosswalks across industry leading security and privacy regulatory frameworks. Define canonical control IDs, mapping confidence, and evidence data dictionaries; version crosswalks with changelogs and traceability to source authority. Partner with Engineering to operationalize mappings in‑product (integrations, automated tests, exceptions/exemptions, continuous monitoring workflows).
• Elevate content quality and usability - Define standards for control wording, evidence specificity, testing method, and reviewer guidance. Establish content QA processes, audits, and metrics (e.g., adoption, time-to-evidence, completion rates) to continually improve outcomes.
• Drive end‑to‑end GRC product enablement - Build modular content, guidance, and templates for risk management (methodologies, scoring, KRIs), issue & corrective action management (POA&M), policy management (lifecycle, attestations), access reviews (SoD, recertification flows), customer trust / Trust Center artifacts, and third‑party risk management (TPRM) (due diligence, monitoring, contract clauses).
• Act as a product advisor across discovery & design - Partner with PM/Design to support feature discovery (customer interviews, JTBD, task analysis), review UI/UX for control, evidence, and review workflows, run usability tests, and author PRDs/acceptance criteria grounded in auditor and customer needs.
• Author automated tests & continuous monitoring - Translate controls/compliance knowledge and infrastructure contexts (cloud services, SaaS apps, on‑prem, endpoints, networks, CI/CD) into spec‑level automated tests and detectors in Vanta. Define test logic, data sources/integrations (APIs, logs, configs), edge cases, and acceptance criteria; pair with Engineering to implement, validate, and maintain detectors with versioned mappings to frameworks for continuous monitoring.
• Partner with Product to drive roadmap - Translate customer and market needs into GRC requirements, propose experiments, and validate solutions through discovery with Design/UX Research. Influence prioritization using data and field insights; own a backlog for framework/content improvements.
• Enable AI‑assisted compliance - Partner with Engineering/ML to design and ship LLM‑powered guidance and automation. Translate SME knowledge into machine‑readable specs (schemas, ontologies, prompts), define gold‑standard evaluation sets and acceptance criteria, and implement quality/safety guardrails (red‑teaming, refusal policy, privacy controls). Instrument features to monitor accuracy and drift in production.
• Synthesize feedback loops - Analyze input from customers, auditors/assessors, partners, and internal teams to identify gaps, resolve issues, and deliver iterative updates quickly and safely.

How to be successful in this role

• Experience - 5-7+ years in GRC and/or Information Security with hands‑on implementation or assessment across multiple frameworks (e.g., SOC 2, ISO 27001/27701, HIPAA, PCI DSS, NIST CSF/800‑53). Experience with cloud environments and SaaS is strongly preferred. Federal experience (e.g., FedRAMP) is a plus but not required.
• Education (preferred) - Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science; advanced degree a plus.
• GRC craft - Deep understanding of controls, risks, testing approaches, evidence standards, and program operations (policies, risk registers, issues/POA&M management, vendor risk, continuous monitoring).
• Product mindset - Ability to translate requirements into productizable capabilities; comfort with experimentation and data‑driven prioritization.
• Technical & automation (AI‑augmented) - Build leverage with lightweight tools, LLMs, and automation workflows:
• Use AI pair‑programming tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Cursor) to accelerate drafting of specs, mappings, queries, and test logic.
• Own simple automations that stitch together Sheets/Airtable, APIs, and webhooks to remove toil (e.g., mapping QA, evidence normalization, exception routing).
• Design AI‑augmented workflows across teams (e.g., LLM‑assisted control guidance, assessor Q&A triage, remediation suggestions) and measure outcomes (precision/recall, time‑to‑evidence, FP/FN rates).
• Establish safe‑use guidelines and reusable patterns for prompts/agents (versioning, evaluation, privacy) and enable adoption with playbooks and templates.
• Analytical & detail‑oriented - Skilled at precise control wording, mapping accuracy, and evidence specificity; comfortable working in spreadsheets and large data sets (lookups, pivots).
• Communication & collaboration - Excellent written and verbal skills; able to partner effectively with engineers, designers, GTM teams, auditors, and customers.
• Self-motivated and independent - Able to work autonomously while contributing to team success.
• Helpful and resourceful - Willing & excited to support cross-functional teams and improve compliance content.
• Adaptable in a fast-paced environment - Skilled at managing change, solving problems proactively, and taking initiative.
• Nice‑to‑have - Experience with privacy regulations (GDPR/CCPA), risk quantification (e.g., FAIR), audit/assessor background, or B2B SaaS content/enablement.
• Certifications (preferred, not required) - One or more of: CISA, CISSP, CCSK/CCSK+, ISO 27001 Lead Implementer/Lead Auditor, CIPM/CIPT, PCI‑ISA/QSA.
• Open to using AI to amplify their skills and strengthen their work - demonstrating curiosity, a willingness to learn, and sound judgment in applying AI responsibly to improve efficiency and impact

What you can expect as a Vanta'n

• Industry-competitive salary and equity
• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage, with 100% of employee-only benefit premiums covered for most medical plans
• 16 weeks paid Parental Leave for all new parents
• Health & wellness stipend
• Remote workspace, internet, and cellphone stipend
• Commuter benefits for team members who report to the SF and NYC office
• Family planning benefits
• Matching 401(k) contribution with immediate vesting
• Flexible PTO policy, plus 80 hours of Sick Time
• 11 company-paid holidays
• Virtual team building activities, lunch and learns, and other company-wide events!
• Offices in SF, NYC, London, Dublin, Tel Aviv, and Sydney

To provide greater transparency to candidates, we share base pay ranges for all US-based job postings regardless of state. We set standard base pay ranges for all roles based on function, level, and country location, benchmarked against similar-stage growth companies. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors and may vary based on candidate location, skills, depth of work experience, and relevant licenses/credentials.

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At Vanta, we are committed to hiring diverse talent of different backgrounds and as such, it is important to us to provide an inclusive work environment for all. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, gender identity, age, religion, sexual orientation, veteran or disability status, or any other protected class. As an equal opportunity employer, we encourage and welcome people of all backgrounds to apply.

If you are being referred for the role, please contact that person to apply on your behalf