Sr. Security Governance Engineer - Protect, Detect, & Respond

Description About the team

Assurance at Salesforce is being rebuilt as an engineering discipline. Legacy GRC runs on spreadsheets, screenshots, and an annual scramble to prove controls worked months ago. We're replacing it with a model that is continuous, automated, and built into how Salesforce ships. Controls are code. Evidence comes from pipelines, not people chasing tickets.

• Risk-informed, control managed. We monitor, validate, and improve the controls that stand against threats and failures.
• Visibility and invention. We give Salesforce a clear, current view of its security posture, and we invest in the people who build it.
• Always in front. Nothing waits for the next audit to surface.

You'll have real ownership, a real roadmap, and the chance to define what modern assurance looks like for the industry.

What you'll be doing:

As a Sr. Security Governance Engineer, you'll translate enterprise security policies, regulatory requirements, and risk expectations into measurable, technically actionable controls. You'll help build a governance framework where policies and standards are version-controlled, validated, and integrated into engineering workflows. Over time, you'll grow into a Security Control Family Owner for domains such as IAM, Cloud, Application Security, Cryptography, Data Protection, or Infrastructure Security. The focus is governance, control design, and policy ownership. It is not hands-on software development.

• Policy and standards: Develop and maintain security policies, technical standards, and control requirements. Manage the policy lifecycle: versioning, approvals, exceptions, reviews, and change management. Keep them aligned with architecture, risk appetite, and regulatory obligations.
• Governance-as-Code / Policy-as-Code: Define structured, machine-readable policy and control requirements. Work with engineering to turn them into guardrails and validation criteria, using tools like OPA/Rego or cloud-native policy frameworks. You won't necessarily own the implementation. Review implementations for alignment with policy intent.
• Control framework: Maintain a common control framework with clear objectives, ownership, and validation criteria. Establish traceability from regulation to policy to control to implementation. Set expectations for preventive, detective, and compensating controls, and support continuous evaluation of control effectiveness.
• Control family ownership: Act as the SME and point of contact for your assigned domains. Interpret regulations, assess gaps, exceptions, and emerging risks, and recommend improvements.
• Collaboration: Work with Security Engineering, Product Security, Cloud Security, IAM, Compliance, Risk, Audit, Legal, and business teams. Bring a governance perspective to architecture and design discussions.

Expected Outcomes

• Decision speed: Rules are obvious, decisions are fast, and outputs are predictable, with governance built into the engineering workflow.
• Scalable governance: Policies and control requirements are clear, consistent, and technically actionable.
• Governance-as-Code adoption: Requirements are version-controlled, traceable, and integrated into security practices.
• Alignment and visibility: Written policies, technical guardrails, and implemented controls match. Regulations, risks, controls, and evidence are clearly linked.
• Control family SMEs: Dedicated owners set policy direction and technical standards for each domain.

What you should have:

• U.S. Citizenship or Permanent Residency required — we're unable to provide visa sponsorship for this role.
• 7+ years in information security governance, security engineering, technology risk, or related functions
• Strong grasp of security policies, standards, control frameworks, and governance processes
• Familiarity with NIST CSF, NIST SP 800-53, ISO 27001, SOC 2, or PCI DSS
• Ability to turn regulatory and security requirements into measurable control objectives
• Working knowledge of cloud security (AWS, Azure, or GCP), IAM, application, infrastructure, and data security
• Understanding of control design (preventive and detective), risk assessment, and exception management
• Familiarity with modern development practices, cloud environments, and CI/CD
• Strong analytical, communication, documentation, and stakeholder-management skills

Nice to have:

• Experience with Governance-as-Code or Policy-as-Code, and policy engines such as OPA/Rego or HashiCorp Sentinel
• Familiarity with YAML, JSON, Git, infrastructure-as-code, and DevSecOps
• Experience with GRC platforms, Common Controls Frameworks (CCF), and OSCAL
• Exposure to security posture management, compliance validation, architecture reviews, or AI governance

How We Work:

• Engineering-first. We use version control, code review, CI/CD, and backlogs. Assurance work ships like software.
• Automate first. If it's done manually twice, it's a candidate for a build.
• Signals, not surprises. Gaps become alerts and workflows, and control failures resolve through defined escalation paths.
• Embedded partners. We work alongside T&P teams as peers, not gatekeepers, and solve problems with them, not at them.
• Outcomes over activity. We measure risk reduced, effort saved, and audit friction removed.
• Room to grow. Learn the engineering side if you come from GRC, or the risk side if you come from engineering. We support both paths.

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance and the Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring, Salesforce will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records. In the United States, compensation offered will be determined by factors such as location, job level, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Certain roles may be eligible for incentive compensation, equity, and benefits. Salesforce offers a variety of benefits to help you live well including: time off programs, medical, dental, vision, mental health support, paid parental leave, life and disability insurance, 401(k), and an employee stock purchasing program. More details about company benefits can be found at the following link: https://www.salesforcebenefits.com.