Security GRC Lead, Forward Deployed Assurance

Description Role Overview We are looking for a technically strong Security Governance professional who can bridge the gap between Security & Compliance requirements and Engineering implementation.

This role will serve as the technical voice and face of Assurance. You will partner closely with Engineering organizations, PCLs, Product Security, Legal, and other stakeholders to understand how security and compliance requirements are implemented in real systems. You will identify what is working and what is not, and translate those insights back into practical, scalable governance requirements.

The successful candidate will understand systems and architectures deeply enough to move beyond validating whether a control exists. They will evaluate how the control is designed, implemented, operated, and scaled across the enterprise.

Key Responsibilities:

• Bridge Assurance and Engineering - Serve as a technical liaison between Assurance, Engineering, Product Security, PCLs, Legal, and other stakeholders, ensuring governance requirements are technically feasible, understandable, and implementable.
• Evaluate Control Implementation - Work directly with Engineering teams to understand how security and compliance controls are implemented within applications, platforms, infrastructure, cloud environments, and engineering workflows.
• Create the Engineering Feedback Loop - Assess what is working, what is creating unnecessary friction, and where controls or requirements are unclear or difficult to operationalize. Feed those insights back into control design, standards, and governance processes.
• Make Requirements Engineer-Usable - Translate regulatory, compliance, and security expectations into clear, actionable technical requirements that Engineering teams can consistently implement and validate.
• Develop Second-Line Oversight - Develop second-line oversight protocols that independently monitor, audit, and validate that all security controls are operational across engineering teams in Salesforce (e.g., attestations, CRE checks).
• Understand Systems End-to-End - Develop a deep understanding of key platforms, architectures, engineering processes, security capabilities, and control implementations to help Assurance make better risk and compliance decisions.
• Assess Risk in M&A - Assess control and risk exposure during M&As. Design the assessment to price risk, evaluate compatibility, and deliver an executable activation plan tied back to the risk model.
• Partner on Emerging Security Requirements - Collaborate with Product Security, Legal, PCEs, Market Enablement, and other teams to understand emerging requirements and determine how they should translate into future security controls and engineering expectations.
• Track the Direction of Compliance Frameworks - Monitor where regulatory and compliance expectations are heading, including AI governance, the EU AI Act, evolving international requirements, and market-specific regulatory expectations. Proactively identify implications for the organization.
• Drive Change Management and Enablement - Build the change management, training, and communication needed to shift teams from "go find and interpret a policy" to "know precisely what applies and how to comply."
• Run Control Incident Management - Stand up a formal incident management practice for control failures. Include postmortems, root-cause analysis, and error budgets for controls, modeled on availability incident response.
• Influence Future Control Design - Partner with control owners and technical teams to evolve controls based on new technologies, regulatory expectations, architecture changes, and lessons learned from implementation.
• Drive Security Champion Engagement - Build strong relationships with technical stakeholders across Engineering. Establish a network of security/control champions who can provide implementation feedback, promote requirements, and help scale governance across teams.
• Report to Executive Leadership - Report on control reliability, coverage, pressure, and systemic risk trends to executive leadership. Feed findings back to the control framework for continuous improvement.
• Represent Assurance Across Technical Organizations - Act as a trusted technical representative for Assurance in architecture, engineering, security, and governance discussions. Help ensure Assurance is involved early rather than only during audit or compliance validation.

What we're looking for:

• U.S. Citizenship or Permanent Residency required. We're unable to provide visa sponsorship for this role.
• Strong technical background in security engineering, cloud security, product security, IAM, platform engineering, or security architecture.
• Ability to understand complex systems, architectures, APIs, infrastructure, cloud environments, and software development processes.
• Experience translating security, risk, regulatory, or compliance requirements into technical implementation requirements.
• Strong understanding of security controls and frameworks such as NIST, ISO 27001, SOC, SOX, FedRAMP, or similar frameworks.
• Familiarity with emerging technology and regulatory areas such as AI security, AI governance, privacy, and evolving global technology regulations.
• Ability to work effectively with Engineering while also partnering with Legal, Compliance, Security, Risk, and business stakeholders.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to explain technical implementation details to governance teams and translate governance expectations into language Engineering teams can act on.
• Ability to challenge existing requirements constructively and recommend improvements based on technical realities and risk.
• Experience with independent control testing, assurance or audit practices, incident or root-cause analysis, or M&A due diligence is a plus.

What Success Looks Like: Success in this role means creating a strong connection between what Assurance requires and what Engineering can effectively implement. Controls become more technically relevant, and requirements become easier for Engineering teams to consume. Implementation challenges are identified earlier, and emerging security and regulatory expectations are incorporated into the control environment before they become compliance gaps. Control failures are handled with the same rigor as availability incidents, and leadership has clear visibility into control reliability and systemic risk.

Ultimately, this role will help move Assurance from primarily validating compliance to becoming a technical governance partner that actively shapes secure and compliant engineering practices by design.

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.