Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Cisco is seeking a transformational Head of Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) to lead the modernization of product security governance, compliance, and risk assurance across its global portfolio. The role involves leading the transformation of the GRC function, influencing senior leaders, and designing AI-enabled GRC operating models to enhance risk visibility and operational efficiency.
Responsibilities
- Lead the transformation of Network Platform Security Organization’s product GRC function into a modern, engineering-driven risk and assurance organization
- Balance regulatory rigor with speed, scalability, and business enablement
- Influence senior leaders across security, engineering, product, legal, and enterprise governance organizations
- Drive a culture of automation, measurable risk transparency, engineering partnership, and operational excellence
- Own divisional product compliance programs and certifications, including FedRAMP, ISO 27001, SOC, NIST-aligned frameworks, global privacy/security obligations, and emerging regulatory requirements
- Design and implement AI-enabled GRC operating models that leverage automation, telemetry, analytics, and workflow orchestration to improve risk visibility and operational efficiency
Skills
- Bachelor's Degree combined with 8 years of experience in cybersecurity, product security, governance/risk/compliance, or security engineering leadership roles within global technology organizations, or Master's Degree, combined with 6 years of related experience, or PhD, combined with 3 years of similar experience. Previous supervisory experience also required
- Experience leading large-scale GRC transformation initiatives in complex product or cloud environments
- Understanding of modern compliance and assurance frameworks including FedRAMP, ISO 27001, SOC 2, NIST, GDPR, NIS2, DORA, PCI, and related global regulatory frameworks
- Experience building or scaling automation-first governance, continuous compliance, or GRC engineering capabilities
- Leadership experience managing technical and cross-functional teams
- Experience within cloud, SaaS, enterprise networking, OT/IoT, or hardware product environments
- Background in DevSecOps, controls engineering, security automation, or risk engineering
- Experience with AI/LLM-enabled operational tooling or analytics platforms
- Experience crafting scalable governance platforms and internal assurance tooling
- Industry certifications such as CISSP, CISM, CRISC, CISA, ISO Lead Auditor, or equivalent
Benefits
- Medical, dental and vision insurance
- A 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution
- Paid parental leave
- Short and long-term disability coverage
- Basic life insurance
- Employees may be eligible to receive grants of Cisco restricted stock units, which vest following continued employment with Cisco for defined periods of time.
- 10 paid holidays per full calendar year, plus 1 floating holiday for non-exempt employees
- 1 paid day off for employee’s birthday, paid year-end holiday shutdown, and 4 paid days off for personal wellness determined by Cisco
- Non-exempt employees** receive 16 days of paid vacation time per full calendar year, accrued at rate of 4.92 hours per pay period for full-time employees
- Exempt employees participate in Cisco’s flexible vacation time off program, which has no defined limit on how much vacation time eligible employees may use (subject to availability and some business limitations)
- 80 hours of sick time off provided on hire date and each January 1st thereafter, and up to 80 hours of unused sick time carried forward from one calendar year to the next
- Additional paid time away may be requested to deal with critical or emergency issues for family members
- Optional 10 paid days per full calendar year to volunteer
- For non-sales roles, employees are also eligible to earn annual bonuses subject to Cisco’s policies.
- Employees on sales plans earn performance-based incentive pay on top of their base salary, which is split between quota and non-quota components, subject to the applicable Cisco plan.
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