Governance, Risk & Compliance - Lead

Who are we?
Smarsh empowers its customers to manage risk and unleash intelligence in their digital communications. Our growing community of over 6500 organizations in regulated industries counts on Smarsh every day to help them spot compliance, legal or reputational risks in 80+ communication channels before those risks become regulatory fines or headlines.  Relentless innovation has fueled our journey to consistent leadership recognition from analysts like Gartner and Forrester, and our sustained, aggressive growth has landed Smarsh in the annual Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing American companies since 2008.

Core Responsibilities

• ISMS Governance & Controls Assurance
• Lead the maintenance and continuous improvement of Smarsh’s ISO 27001-aligned ISMS.
• Oversee the control assurance programme, ensuring robust evidence collection, control testing, and continuous monitoring.
• Own key internal and external audit workstreams, including SOC 2, ISO 27001, FedRAMP  and customer audits.
• Cybersecurity Risk Management
• Drive the risk assessment lifecycle, embedding business, technical, and supply chain risk perspectives.
• Enhance risk methodologies and tools, integrating real-time risk metrics into dashboards and governance forums.
• ·Support risk acceptance processes and facilitate cross-functional remediation plans.
• Regulatory, Contractual & Client Assurance
• Monitor emerging regulations (e.g. DORA, SEC, UK AI Act) and translate them into actionable internal obligations.
• Manage customer security assessments and DDQs, enabling frictionless trust through reusable assurance artefacts.
• Coordinate timely, high-quality client responses and external assurance artefacts in the Smarsh Trust Center.
• Third-Party & Supply Chain Risk
• Lead third-party security reviews and ensure governance controls are extended across the vendor lifecycle.
• Partner with Procurement and Legal to align contractual security requirements and risk acceptance criteria.
• Policy Governance & Stakeholder Reporting
• Maintain the InfoSec policy lifecycle and track compliance across business units.
• Develop and maintain security governance metrics and reporting for the CISO and wider executive team.
• Support the operation of governance forums and steering committees.
• Security Awareness & Culture
• Deliver targeted security training and awareness campaigns aligned to regulatory and business needs.
• Promote a security-aware culture of governance accountability and enablement across teams.
• GRC Operations & Enablement
• Own and refine core GRC workflows, including documentation, issue tracking, evidence management, and status reporting.
• Maintain and expand GRC tooling integrations, ensuring high-quality automation and reporting outputs.

Essential Experience

• 7–10 years’ experience in security governance, risk, or compliance roles within SaaS or regulated industries.
• Strong track record operationalising ISMS frameworks, managing control assurance, and supporting external audits.
• Hands-on experience with GRC platforms, security metrics reporting, and risk assessments.
• Proven ability to work across business, engineering, and legal teams to embed governance effectively.
• Familiarity with modern regulatory landscapes and frameworks such as ISO 27001, SOC 2, GDPR, DORA, FedRAMP and SEC Cyber rules.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to create executive-level reporting and artefacts.
• Experience leading client assurance programmes or third-party risk management.
• Professional certifications (CISA, CISM, ISO 27001 LA, CISSP, CRISC) preferred.

About our culture
Smarsh hires lifelong learners with a passion for innovating with purpose, humility and humor. Collaboration is at the heart of everything we do. We work closely with the most popular communications platforms and the world’s leading cloud infrastructure platforms. We use the latest in AI/ML technology to help our customers break new ground at scale. We are a global organization that values diversity, and we believe that providing opportunities for everyone to be their authentic self is key to our success. Smarsh leadership, culture, and commitment to developing our people have all garnered Comparably.com Best Places to Work Awards. Come join us and find out what the best work of your career looks like.