---
title: 'Founding Enterprise SDR at Zania'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/founding-enterprise-sdr-zania-palo-alto-avagb6jpshwp'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-08'
---

# Founding Enterprise SDR at Zania

- **Company:** Zania
- **Location:** Palo Alto, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Posted:** 2026-08-12
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-08
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/zania/0953e947-f5bb-460e-85a9-fea4e40f5f88

## Job description

## FOUNDING ENTERPRISE SDR

## WHY ZANIA

Every enterprise spends millions of dollars on Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC). It's one of the most critical, yet universally painful, parts of running a business. For decades, this industry has been dominated by legacy systems with notoriously low NPS scores, making it totally ripe for disruption.

Zania is building agentic AI for Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) to solve this massive problem. We are on a rocketship trajectory, creating intelligent agents that automate and augment the most complex risk and compliance workflows. We have found exceptional product-market fit and are scaling our team very quickly. Some reasons to join Zania are:

- Dream Customers: Our customers are the most notable enterprises in the world, including FAANG, Big 4 firms, and a portfolio of top customers.
- Tier 1 Backing: Funded by a leading Tier 1 venture capital fund, giving us the resources to build a generational company.
- World-Class Team: Zania is hiring the best. Our team includes AI and Security leaders from Airbnb, Microsoft, Bain & Company, Deloitte, PwC, Brex, and Instacart.
- Pioneering Technology: Our engineers and GRC experts work at the absolute forefront of applied AI.
- Hyper-Growth: We have seen 10x ARR growth in the last year and are rapidly expanding.
- Competitive Compensation & Equity.

## ROLE OVERVIEW

This is not a seat for someone who wants a playbook handed to them. You will be Zania’s Founding Enterprise SDR.

We are targeting the most heavily guarded executives in the world—Fortune 500 CISOs, Chief Risk Officers, and Compliance Leads. Standard "smile and dial" tactics and copy-pasted email sequences will not work here. We need a ruthless, creative, and highly resourceful hunter who can figure out how to break into accounts that seem impenetrable.

Because you are selling cutting-edge AI, we expect you to use cutting-edge AI. You will be an "AI-native" SDR, leveraging the latest tools (custom GPTs, Clay, Perplexity, agentic workflows) to research accounts, craft hyper-personalized messaging at scale, and 10x your output. You will build our outbound engine from scratch alongside the founders.

## WHAT YOU’LL DO

- Build the Outbound Engine: As the first SDR, you won't just run plays; you will write the playbook. You will figure out what messaging, channels, and cadences actually convert CISOs.
- AI-Powered Prospecting: You will build and leverage AI workflows to scrape intent data, analyze company 10-Ks, and generate hyper-personalized outreach. You use AI to do the work of 10 SDRs.
- Guerrilla Tactics & Resourcefulness: If email fails, you find their phone number. If the phone fails, you send a personalized video. If that fails, you figure out what obscure Slack community they are in. You do whatever it legally and ethically takes to get the meeting.
- Break into Tier-1 Accounts: Map out complex enterprise org charts, identify champions and decision-makers, and execute multi-threaded outbound campaigns into the Fortune 500.
- Partner with Founders: Work intimately with the founding team and Account Executives to iterate on our ideal customer profile (ICP) and refine our core pitch.

## WHAT WE CARE ABOUT

- The Builder's Mentality: You thrive in ambiguity. You don't need a manager telling you what to do every hour; you are a self-starter who runs experiments and shares results.
- AI-First Mindset: You are deeply curious about AI and naturally look for ways to automate the mundane parts of sales so you can focus on high-value human connection.
- Fearlessness & Resilience: Rejection is just data. You are entirely unfazed by cold-calling a multi-billion dollar company’s executive team.
- Creative Hustle: You view a closed door as a puzzle. You are scrappy, out-of-the-box, and relentless in your pursuit of pipeline.

## MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

- Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.
- 1–3 years of experience in an outbound SDR, sales, or highly strategic prospecting role, ideally at an early-stage B2B SaaS or cybersecurity startup.
- Demonstrated experience using modern AI tools to enhance productivity (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude, Clay, Perplexity) in a sales context.
- Exceptional written and verbal communication skills—you must be able to sound credible to technical security leaders.
- Track record of consistently meeting or exceeding outbound meeting targets.

## HOW TO APPLY

Skip the standard cover letter. Your application is a test of your outreach skills.

Find one of the Zania founders or sales leaders and send them a cold email or LinkedIn message pitching Zania as if they were a target CISO. Use AI to research them and write the hook, but inject your own human creativity to make it impossible to ignore. Tell us briefly what your tech stack/workflow was to create the message.

The bar is simple: Would we actually take this meeting?

## LOCATION

Based in (or willing to relocate to) Palo Alto, working in-person with the team five days a week.

## COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS

- Competitive base salary + uncapped commission.
- Equity (you are a founding team member).
- Flexible PTO policy.
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance.

## About Zania

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Zania provides an autonomous AI agent platform that executes Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) work, including controls testing, risk assessments, audits, and security questionnaires.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series A)
- **Headquarters**: Palo Alto, California, USA
- **Founded**: 2023
- **Founders**: Shruti Gupta

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: AI-powered Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) / Cybersecurity
- **Target customers**: B2B, Enterprise (Fortune 500, Big Four audit & advisory firms, CISOs, Heads of GRC, TPRM leaders)
- **Mission or purpose statement**: To automate and execute complex GRC work with provable accuracy, replacing manual processes with autonomous AI agents.

## Products & Services
- **Autonomous Third-Party Risk Management (TPRM)**: AI agents that handle vendor risk tiering, evidence collection, validation, follow-ups, and continuous monitoring end-to-end.
- **First-Party Risk**: AI-driven qualitative and quantitative risk evaluations based on a company's unique systems, controls, and data.
- **Continuous Compliance**: Agents that continuously collect evidence, identify gaps against any framework (SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, PCI DSS, NIST CSF, GDPR, etc.), and assist with remediation.
- **Controls Testing**: Autonomous testing of 100% of controls for both design and operating effectiveness, with actionable recommendations.
- **Security Questionnaires**: AI that leverages a company's security context to answer incoming vendor questionnaires with precision in minutes.
- **Self-Governing Policies**: Policies that update themselves to stay in sync with a company's compliance and tech stack.
- **Agent-Driven Risk Intelligence**: Continuous monitoring of vendors using data from integrations, incidents, supply chain, threat intel, breach history, and company profiles.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total Funding of $18.0M (Series A, led by NEA, announced October 2025)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: NEA (lead), Menlo Ventures, Anthropic, Palm Drive Capital, AWS ISV Accelerate Program. Advisors include Mike Curtis (Ex-Head of Eng, Airbnb), Anand Deshpande (Founder & Chairman, Persistent Systems), and George Kurtz (Founder & CEO, Crowdstrike).
- **Growth Signals**: Trusted by Fortune 500 companies and Big Four audit & advisory firms. Launched "Autonomous TPRM" in February 2026. Headcount grew 17.6% YoY. Active job postings grew 125% YoY. LinkedIn follower count grew 85.7% yearly.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Purpose-built AI agents** for GRC, not a general-purpose LLM wrapper — trained on domain-specific GRC workflows.
- **Provable accuracy and explainability**: Features like confidence scores, visible reasoning, source references, and deep research make outputs audit-ready.
- **Enterprise-grade security**: SOC 2 Type 2 compliant, private models with no training on customer data, and a reported hallucination rate of <0.01%.
- **End-to-end workflow automation**: Agents handle the entire GRC process from evidence collection to remediation, not just individual tasks.
- **Founder-led domain expertise**: CEO Shruti Gupta previously led AI at Microsoft and held founding security/CISO roles at Airbnb, Instacart, and Brex.

## Strategic Focus
- **Autonomous execution**: Shifting GRC from human-led processes with AI assistance to agent-led execution with human oversight.
- **Expanding TPRM capabilities**: Launched "Autonomous TPRM" in February 2026 to fully automate vendor risk management.
- **Continuous compliance**: Moving from point-in-time audits to 24/7 continuous monitoring and evidence collection.
- **Enterprise scale**: Targeting deeper penetration into Fortune 500 and Big Four firms.

## Why Work Here
- **Rocketship growth**: Early-stage, well-funded startup ($18M Series A) with strong investor backing from top-tier VCs (NEA, Menlo Ventures) and strategic partners (Anthropic).
- **Compelling mission**: Opportunity to build the future of AI-driven GRC, a massive market with high demand.
- **Compensation**: Top-of-market pay with meaningful equity ownership.
- **Perks**: Flexible PTO, free catered meals and snacks, relocation and immigration support.
- **Work environment**: In-office presence in Palo Alto, CA, with a presence in India. The team is small (~11 employees) and technical (25% of staff in technical roles).
- **Leadership**: Founded by Shruti Gupta, a former AI leader at Microsoft and founding security/CISO at Airbnb, Instacart, and Brex. Backed by world-class advisors from Crowdstrike, Airbnb, and Persistent Systems.
- **Growth trajectory**: Rapidly growing with 9 active job postings, 125% YoY increase in job postings, and strong revenue growth signals.

## Sources
1. [zania.ai](https://zania.ai/)
2. [zania.ai/careers](https://zania.ai/careers)
3. [zania.ai/about-us](https://zania.ai/about-us)
4. [linkedin.com/company/zaniaai](https://www.linkedin.com/company/zaniaai)
5. [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/zania)

## Other roles at Zania

- [Graphics Designer | Framer & Video Editing](https://feeny.ai/job/graphics-designer-framer-video-editing-zania-india-arcz8dsand5b) — India
- [Eng Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/eng-manager-zania-palo-alto-8n4xxwd00hej) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Growth & Demand Generation](https://feeny.ai/job/growth-demand-generation-zania-palo-alto-rmnzg5wgajdv) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Software Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-zania-palo-alto-exkya0ggm5jz) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Head of Engineering](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-engineering-zania-palo-alto-bpt37pjsyjye) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Ex Founder](https://feeny.ai/job/ex-founder-zania-palo-alto-0y2683te77vr) — Palo Alto, CA
- [GRC Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/grc-engineer-zania-palo-alto-r7cjfd25ady5) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Founding Account Executive](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-account-executive-zania-palo-alto-tpa1c47yx77n) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Applied AI Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/applied-ai-engineer-zania-palo-alto-h5ctw8143rhh) — Palo Alto, CA