Who we are
Sardine is the leading agentic risk platform for fighting financial crime. Our integrated solution unifies data across risk teams to help organizations stop fraud in real time, prevent AI-driven attacks, and automate fraud and AML operations. Sardine’s platform is strengthened by one of the fastest-growing fraud consortiums in the market, spanning more than 6 billion profiled devices, 800 million consumers, and 3 million businesses worldwide. Leading companies including FIS, GoDaddy, Intuit, Edward Jones, ZoomInfo, and Checkout.com rely on Sardine to secure and grow trust in their products.
Our culture
- We have hubs in the Bay Area, NYC, Austin, Toronto, and São Paulo. However, we maintain a remote-first work culture. #WorkFromAnywhere
- We hire talented, self-motivated individuals with extreme ownership and high growth orientation.
- We value performance and not hours worked. We believe you shouldn't have to miss your family dinner, your kid's school play, friends get-together, or doctor's appointments for the sake of adhering to an arbitrary work schedule.
Location
- From Home / Beach / Mountain / Cafe / Anywhere!
- We are a remote-first company with a globally distributed team. You can find your productive zone and work from there.
About the role As Security Compliance Lead, you own Sardine’s security compliance and GRC function end-to-end and reduce risk to our environment through effective communication, partnership, and program ownership. You are the primary point of contact for auditors, regulators, and industry stakeholders, and you partner with engineering, IT, product, security, and legal teams to run successful compliance and review exercises across multiple frameworks. This is a senior, hands-on ownership role. You set how the compliance program runs rather than executing a plan handed to you, and you are accountable for keeping Sardine continuously audit- and customer-ready. You also lead and develop the team, with a Security Compliance Analyst reporting to you and room to grow the function as Sardine scales.
What you’ll do
- Own compliance planning and the compliance program across SOC 2 Type II, PCI DSS (Level 1 Service Provider), ISO 27001, GDPR, CCPA, and DORA — responsible for the program’s design and direction, not only its execution.
- Drive Sardine's FedRAMP effort by working toward authorization, coordinating NIST SP 800-53 control implementation, 3PAO assessment, and continuous monitoring across engineering and IT.
- Serve as the primary interface to auditors, regulators, and industry stakeholders, and partner with internal engineering, IT, product, security, and legal teams to drive reviews to clean outcomes.
- Present objectives, scope, and results to senior management and the board (via the CISO), clearly articulating the business impact of control gaps in a highly professional and proficient manner.
- Own the control framework — including rationalizing overlapping controls across standards into a coherent, evidence-efficient set — and the security policy and standards library.
- Own the risk picture — the risk register, risk quantification, and reporting cadence — and validate that actions taken to address risks are appropriate and reported accurately.
- Own the customer assurance and trust program — security questionnaires, attestations, and trust artifacts — so security review does not block deals.
- Manage evidence and drive improvement — coordinate the assimilation of evidence, scans, and artifacts, and lead process improvements in response to findings from regulators, internal and external quality reviews, and maturity assessments.
- Build product and technical fluency — understand Sardine’s platform and architecture well enough to ground control design and risk decisions in how the technology actually works, and to engage engineering and product as a peer.
- Look for creative, alternative solutions that promote consistency and unlock streamlining and automation opportunities.
- Produce executive-ready work — high-quality documentation and presentations, and well-run meetings with regulators and internal stakeholders where you set the objectives, plan, and content.
- Lead and develop the team — starting with a Security Compliance Analyst — setting priorities, reviewing work, mentoring, and scaling the function as obligations grow.
What we’re looking for
- 7+ years in security compliance, GRC, or audit, including end-to-end ownership of audit or certification programs (SOC 2, PCI DSS, and/or ISO 27001).
- Deep knowledge of security and privacy frameworks — PCI DSS, SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR/CCPA, and DORA; familiarity with control frameworks such as NIST CSF and CIS.
- Technical and product comfort — able to build fluency in a technical product (e.g., device intelligence, behavioral biometrics, transaction monitoring) and hold your own with engineering and product teams.
- Excellent communication — strong written and verbal skills, executive-ready documentation, and credible presence with auditors, regulators, and leadership.
- Fast-paced, high-growth experience — fintech or payments strongly preferred given Sardine’s PCI Level 1 service provider obligations.
- Able to work as a leader, a partner, and an individual contributor as the situation calls for, and to travel as needed.
- People leadership — experience leading, mentoring, or managing others, or clear readiness to step into managing a direct report.
Bonus points
- Direct experience running a PCI DSS Level 1 service provider program.
- Operational resilience — hands-on exposure to DORA requirements.
- Tooling — familiarity with GRC and security tooling (compliance automation platforms such as Vanta; HRIS such as Rippling) and with macOS environments.
Benefits we offer
- Generous compensation in cash and equity
- Early exercise for all options, including pre-vested
- Work from anywhere: Remote-first Culture
- Flexible paid time off and
Sourced from the a16z Speedrun talent network — apply on Speedrun.