---
title: 'VP of GRC at Zania'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/vp-of-grc-zania-palo-alto-57ye98q7cfd0'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-03'
---

# VP of GRC at Zania

- **Company:** Zania
- **Location:** Palo Alto, CA
- **Compensation:** $260k–$320k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-10-28
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-03
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/zania/121a71da-1179-42da-8764-bde725a60942

## Job description

## 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. Series A led by NEA, with Anthropic and Menlo Ventures. $18M raised 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.
- Hyper-Growth: We have seen 10x ARR growth in the last year and are rapidly expanding.
- Competitive Compensation & Equity.

## The Role

As VP of GRC, you will build and lead Zania's customer-facing GRC organization. You will be the senior GRC voice in front of our largest customers and partners, turning Zania's agents into audit-ready outcomes across SOC 2, ISO 27001, ISO 42001, NIST, HIPAA, PCI DSS, and third-party risk programs, delivered faster and with more coverage than any traditional team. Our customers include Fortune 500 enterprises and Big 4 firms who are replacing weeks of manual compliance work with agents. You will own how those engagements are scoped, delivered, and expanded, and you will work with the founders, product, and AI engineering to make sure what we learn in the field makes our agents better.

## What You'll Do

- Build the GRC organization: Hire, coach, and scale a team of GRC leads, solutions architects, and compliance specialists.
- Own customer delivery: Lead GRC engagements end to end, from scoping and onboarding through gap assessments, controls testing, audit readiness, and third-party risk programs.
- Be the executive GRC advisor: Serve as a trusted advisor to CISOs, CROs, Chief Audit Executives, and Big 4 and advisory partners.
- Build agent-first playbooks: Design repeatable delivery methodologies across SOC 2, ISO 27001/42001, NIST CSF/800-53, HIPAA, PCI DSS, GDPR, DORA, and the EU AI Act.
- Shape the product: Partner with product and AI engineering to turn field insight into agent capabilities, evaluation criteria, and human-in-the-loop guardrails.
- Support strategic deals: Lead GRC discovery, solution design, and proof-of-value work with the sales team on our largest opportunities.
- Measure what matters: Define and report on time to audit readiness, assessment cycle time, vendor coverage, customer satisfaction, and expansion.

Representative Projects

- Take a Fortune 500 customer from kickoff to SOC 2 and ISO 27001 audit readiness in weeks using Zania's agents, and turn it into a repeatable playbook.
- Roll out Zania Autonomous TPRM across a customer's full vendor base, moving coverage from a fraction of vendors to 100% of in-scope vendors.
- Build an ISO 42001 and EU AI Act readiness offering with a Big 4 partner for enterprises adopting AI.

## What You Have

- Deep GRC expertise (required): You have run audits, assessments, and remediation programs yourself and can speak credibly with CISOs, auditors, and risk leaders about any major framework.
- Customer-facing leadership: You have led client-facing GRC or audit teams and know how to deliver high-stakes engagements on time.
- Executive presence: You build trust quickly with security, risk, and audit leaders at large enterprises and advisory firms.
- Builder mentality: You have built a team, practice, or program from early stages and are comfortable owning it end to end.
- AI curiosity: You believe agents will change how GRC work gets done and want to help define how.

## Minimum Qualifications

- Bachelor's degree in Information Security, Accounting, Business, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
- 12+ years of experience in GRC, IT audit, or security compliance.
- 5+ years leading customer-facing GRC, audit, or advisory teams.
- Hands-on expertise with SOC 2, ISO 27001, NIST, and third-party risk management.
- Strong structured written and verbal communication skills.

## Nice to Have

- Experience at a Big 4 or advisory firm, or at a GRC platform company.
- Certifications such as CISA, CISSP, CRISC, CISM, or ISO 27001 Lead Auditor.
- Familiarity with AI governance frameworks (ISO 42001, NIST AI RMF, EU AI Act).
- Experience as an early leader at a high-growth startup.

## Compensation & Benefits

- Competitive salary + significant equity
- Flexible PTO
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance
- Meals and snacks in the office
- Relocation and immigration support

Zania is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, national origin, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or related condition, or any other basis protected by law.

## 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

- [VP of Security/GRC Partnerships](https://feeny.ai/job/vp-of-security-grc-partnerships-zania-palo-alto-y284r635m228) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Director of Engineering](https://feeny.ai/job/director-of-engineering-zania-palo-alto-31v8c50rhpjr) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Director of Marketing](https://feeny.ai/job/director-of-marketing-zania-palo-alto-txw3h771kr9y) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Executive Assistant to the CEO](https://feeny.ai/job/executive-assistant-to-the-ceo-zania-palo-alto-hvm71441b8sx) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Founding Enterprise SDR](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-enterprise-sdr-zania-palo-alto-avagb6jpshwp) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Engineering Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/engineering-manager-zania-palo-alto-8n4xxwd00hej) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Growth Marketing Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/growth-marketing-lead-zania-palo-alto-rmnzg5wgajdv) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Staff Software Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-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