--- title: 'GRC Lead at Wordsmith AI' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/grc-lead-wordsmith-ai-edinburgh-9kzvttdajdy3' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-04' --- # GRC Lead at Wordsmith AI - **Company:** Wordsmith AI - **Location:** Edinburgh, United Kingdom - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** onsite - **Posted:** 2026-07-10 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-04 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/wordsmith/c08d76ac-ddd5-4a0d-896e-aabe3adffeeb ## Job description GRC Lead Edinburgh Wordsmith Wordsmith is building the AI-enabled command centre for in-house legal teams. Our customers are some of the most demanding enterprise legal departments in the world, and they hold us to a high bar on security, privacy, and responsible AI. We're looking for a senior leader to take ownership of security and compliance as we scale. ## The Role GRC Leads own security and compliance at Wordsmith end-to-end — setting the strategy for IT and infrastructure security, running our certification program across SOC 2, ISO 27001, and ISO 42001, embedding responsible-AI practices into how we build and ship product, and making sure privacy and regulatory obligations (GDPR and beyond) are handled properly as we grow. This is a senior role that blends strategy and hands-on execution. You'll set multi-year direction, represent Wordsmith's security posture to executives, customers, and — as we grow — the board, and build the team, tooling, and controls the company needs at the next stage, not just maintain what exists today. ## What You'll Do Security Strategy & Leadership - Own Wordsmith's multi-year IT security and compliance roadmap — setting priorities, budget, and tooling decisions in partnership with Engineering and company leadership. IT & Infrastructure Security - Own security architecture across corporate IT and infrastructure — identity & access management, endpoint protection, and cloud/network security — and lead incident response when issues arise. Compliance & Certification - Own SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001/27017/27018, and ISO 42001 end-to-end — policies, controls, audit evidence, and the audits themselves. AI Governance - Run our AI governance program, including AI Impact Assessments and model/AI-vendor risk reviews, ensuring responsible, compliant AI use across the product. Privacy Operations - Own privacy operations end-to-end — GDPR and other regulatory obligations, DPIAs, RoPA maintenance, sub-processor management, and Data Subject Request fulfilment. Third-Party & Vendor Risk - Assess vendors and AI tools for security, privacy, and AI risk before they're adopted, and put the right contractual safeguards in place at a program level. ## Team & Function Building - Build the people, process, and tooling the function needs as it scales — starting as the senior owner of the program today, with a mandate to build out a team as Wordsmith grows. Executive & Board Reporting - Own risk and compliance reporting to leadership and, as we scale, the board — translating technical risk into business terms. Customer & Deal Support - Act as the senior voice on security for enterprise deals — security questionnaires, DPAs, and our Trust Center — partnering with Sales, Customer Success, and Legal to unblock deals without cutting corners. Automation & Tooling - Build lean, automation-first tooling (e.g. Vanta) for evidence collection and ongoing compliance monitoring, so the program scales without scaling headcount unnecessarily. ## What we're looking for Essential - 8-10+ years in security, IT, or compliance roles, including a track record of owning a security or compliance function end-to-end at a fast-growing SaaS or tech company. - Proven experience building or scaling a security/compliance program from an early stage — ideally including time as the sole or founding owner of the function. - Deep, hands-on expertise across SOC 2, the ISO 27000 series, and ideally ISO 42001. - Strong grounding in core IT security fundamentals — identity & access management, endpoint/device security, and cloud or network infrastructure security. - Practical, working knowledge of GDPR and related privacy regulation (ePrivacy or similar). - Experience presenting security posture, risk, and roadmap to executives, boards, or investors. - Experience building and/or managing a team — or a clear point of view on how you'd grow one as the function scales. - Comfortable owning budget and vendor decisions at a strategic level, not just executing against someone else's plan. - A strong cross-functional operator and executive communicator, bridging Security, IT, Legal/Privacy, Engineering, and GTM. Valued - Prior experience as a Head of Security, Director of Security/IT, or similar senior/leadership title. - Relevant certifications — e.g. CISSP/ISC2, CISM, AIGP, CIPP/E, CIPT, CCSK, or FIP. - Experience in legal tech, AI, or another highly regulated SaaS environment. - Experience designing AI risk or impact-assessment processes from scratch. - Familiarity with tools such as Datagrail, MineOS, Whistic, or SafeBase. ## Why this role matters You'll take a senior leadership seat over security and compliance, with real ownership over how the function is shaped and grown. You'll sit at the centre of trust for a fast-growing legal AI platform, directly enabling enterprise sales and customer confidence. You'll have a clear path to building and leading a team as the function scales with the company. ## What you can expect A small, focused leadership group where your work has visible, immediate impact. Competitive compensation, benefits, and meaningful equity. ## How we work We're an in-office team in Edinburgh. We work together because it helps us collaborate closely across product, engineering, and legal teams. You should expect to be in the office as your default. This is a high ownership role. You'll be trusted to set strategy, represent security to executives and customers, and drive outcomes without heavy oversight. ## About Wordsmith AI ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Wordsmith provides an AI-native legal operations platform that captures, triages, resolves, and records every legal request from the business, enabling in-house legal teams to work at the speed of AI. - **Entity Type**: Private (Series B) - **Headquarters**: London, England, United Kingdom - **Founded**: 2023 - **Founders**: Ross McNairn (CEO), Volodymyr Giginiak (CTO), Robbie Falkenthal (COO) ## Core Business - **Primary industry/industries**: Legal Technology (LegalTech), Enterprise AI, Workflow Automation - **Target customers**: In-house legal departments at mid-to-large enterprises across all industries (B2B, Enterprise) - **Mission or purpose statement**: To be the Northstar for legal intelligence in business — to bring the legal function in-house by making it measurable, compressible, and owned, just as every other major corporate cost centre has been. ## Products & Services - **The Wordsmith Platform (Legal Operations System)**: An end-to-end AI-native system built around four core workflows: **Receive** (captures legal requests from Slack, email, Salesforce, Teams, and procurement systems), **Route** (assigns ownership, priority, and context), **Resolve** (automates routine legal work using AI agents — drafting, redlining, research, translation — while escalating complex decisions to lawyers), and **Record** (logs every decision, action, and rationale in real time for audit-ready governance). - **Contract Review & Workflow Integration**: End-to-end contract review embedded directly into business tools like Slack, Gmail, and procurement systems. Reviews are collaborative and web-native. - **Word Integration**: A plugin allowing lawyers to review, redline, draft, research, and translate without leaving Microsoft Word. - **AI Agents**: Chain drafting into a full end-to-end workflow — receive the request, draft the document, route for approval, and send — with no manual step required. - **Global Legal Intelligence Engine**: Covers hundreds of trusted sources across 130+ jurisdictions, combined with deep knowledge of the customer’s own entities, risk profile, and prior positions. ## Market Standing - **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed (private company) - **Key Metric**: Total funding raised — **$100M** across two rounds. Last round: **€60.2M ($70M) Series B** (announced June 2026). - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Index Ventures, Highland Europe, General Catalyst (the firms behind Figma, Stripe, Discord, Airbnb, Revolut, and Canva). - **Growth Signals**: - Used by **500+ organisations globally**, including major enterprises such as **BT, Financial Times, Safelite, Trip.com, and Canva**. - Reports that **Trustpilot cut contract review time by 85%** using the platform. - Planning to grow workforce from ~100 to **~300 employees**, with significant **US market expansion**. - Founded in 2023 and achieved this scale in just over two years. ## Competitive Advantages - **Category-defining position**: Wordsmith is not a legal copilot for individual lawyers — it is an **operating system for the entire in-house legal function**, managing complete request flows across the organisation. This system-level approach is a structural shift away from traditional point-tools. - **Conflict-free business model**: Wordsmith sits on the side of the *buyer* of legal services (the in-house team), not the *seller* (law firms). All other legacy tools were built to serve law firms. Wordsmith’s incentives are aligned with removing friction and cost for the enterprise. - **Vertical-first AI strategy**: Deeply specialised in legal workflows rather than a generalist AI platform, making the product deeply relevant and defensible in a $1.1T global legal market. - **Founding team**: Led by a CEO (Ross McNairn), CTO (Volodymyr Giginiak), and COO (Robbie Falkenthal) who blend legal domain expertise with deep AI and engineering capability. ## Strategic Focus - **Scale globally, with a US expansion priority**: The Series B is explicitly earmarked to accelerate growth in the US market. - **Hire exceptional talent**: Grow the team to ~300 people, maintaining a “fewer, better people” philosophy — a small group of brilliant specialists rather than a crowd of generalists. - **Product depth**: Continue to invest in AI agents, global legal intelligence, and deeper integration into enterprise workflows (Slack, Salesforce, Word, Gmail). - **Move beyond task assistance to full automation**: The stated vision is to make legal “the last black box” in the enterprise — measurable, compressed, and owned internally. ## Why Work Here - **Culture & Philosophy**: Described as a team of “lawyers and engineers blending two worlds.” Core operating principles include: **“fewer, better people”** (small, elite teams), **relentless focus on simplicity**, and building products that are so elegant they “feel like magic.” The company explicitly values **judgment** as the key differentiator in an AI-powered world. - **Growth Trajectory**: A rare stage — Series B with $100M in funding, a small enough team that individual contributions matter every day, and early enough to shape how the company builds. Significant US expansion ahead. - **Work Environment**: Hybrid (roles listed for Edinburgh and London). The hiring process is transparent and values speed: a 30-min screening call, a 45-min technical interview, a short take-home challenge (a couple of hours), and a culture interview. - **Funding Backing**: Backed by the same investors who backed Figma, Stripe, and Canva — strong signal of ambition and long-term thinking. - **Impact**: Working on a problem that is “genuinely new” — building the platform to run in-house legal teams, which is a category that did not exist before AI made it possible. ## Sources 1. [wordsmith.ai](https://www.wordsmith.ai/) 2. [wordsmith.ai/company](https://www.wordsmith.ai/company) 3. [wordsmith.ai/careers](https://www.wordsmith.ai/careers) 4. [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/wordsmith-ai) 5. 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