Senior Director, GRC

Okta•San Francisco, CA

7d•Onsite

About The Position

Okta is seeking a visionary Senior Director, Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) to lead and scale its world-class GRC Security organization. The role focuses on building engineering-forward, automated, and AI-driven GRC programs capable of operating in an evolving AI world. Reporting directly to Security Executive leadership, the Senior Director will partner with Senior Executives across Okta’s workforce, taking direct responsibility for cyber risk, data governance, security compliance, and product certifications. The position requires a blend of deep domain expertise in enterprise cyber risk, audit, and global compliance with a forward-thinking engineering mindset, pioneering continuous control monitoring, compliance-as-code, and robust AI governance for generative and agentic architectures. This is described as a builder's role.

Requirements

Proven Executive Leadership: 10+ years of progressive leadership in Security GRC within a high-growth SaaS, cloud-first, or enterprise technology environment.
AI Governance Expertise: Demonstrated understanding of AI/ML governance challenges, including generative and agentic AI security, data lineage and global AI regulatory landscapes.
Mastery of Security Frameworks: Extensive track record managing compliance for enterprise cloud environments.
Risk Quantification Skills: Deep knowledge of risk management methodologies and the ability to translate complex technical risks into operational context for executives.
Team Scale & Mentorship: Track record of recruiting, mentoring, and retaining high-performing, technical GRC engineering and risk management professionals.
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Security, Engineering, or equivalent experience.

Responsibilities

Drive AI-first Transformation: Execute a vision to integrate AI and agentic tools into daily GRC operations (automated evidence collection, automated risk scoring, intelligent policy mapping, and continuous audit readiness).
Enterprise Risk & Governance: Operationalize Okta’s AI risk and governance framework—addressing training data protection, model risk management, responsible AI principles, and alignment with emerging frameworks (NIST AI RMF, ISO/IEC 42001, and the EU AI Act).
Enterprise Cyber Risk Management: Lead enterprise-wide cyber risk identification, prioritization, treatment, and quantification.
Regulatory & Compliance Assurance: Maintain and expand Okta’s global compliance posture across major security and privacy frameworks, including SOC 1/2/3, ISO 27001/ENS High/MS DPR/PCI-DSS/CSA STAR/HDS.
Policy & Governance Lifecycle: Ensure corporate information security policies and control standards reflect evolving business priorities and emerging threats.
Third-Party & SaaS Risk Governance: Direct high-impact vendor risk assessment programs, ensuring third-party SaaS tools and supply chain risks meet Okta’s stringent security controls program.
Audit Management & Remediation: Serve as the primary executive lead for internal/external audits, customer assurances, and regulatory reviews. Drive rapid, engineering-led remediation of audit findings and control gaps.
Cross-Functional Partnership: Collaborate closely with Product Management, Legal, Privacy, Infrastructure, and Business Technology teams to align compliance requirements with product roadmaps and commercial objectives.