Full-Time

Special Projects Lead

Posted on 9/30/2025

Zania

Zania

11-50 employees

AI-powered GRC automation platform

Compensation Overview

$130k - $200k/yr

+ Base Salary

Company Does Not Provide H1B Sponsorship

Palo Alto, CA, USA

In Person

Travel 25–50% to embed with customers; relocation support available.

Category
Business & Strategy (2)
,
Required Skills
Python
SQL
Requirements
  • Experience: 4+ years in consulting, finance, startups, or other operationally intense environments, ideally with exposure to fast-growing tech companies.
  • Skills: Strong analytical and communication abilities; proven track record managing complex projects end-to-end; technically curious and quick to learn tools like SQL, Python, or workflow platforms.
  • Customer-Facing Experience: Comfortable working directly with enterprise clients and executives; willing to travel 25–50% to embed with customers during high-impact phases.
  • Mindset: Thrives in fast-paced, high-growth settings; energized by “gritty” process optimization and large-scale execution.
  • Location: Based in (or willing to relocate to) Palo Alto, working in-person with the team five days a week.
Responsibilities
  • Own enterprise customer journeys end-to-end: Take accounts from first contract to enterprise-wide adoption and expansion.
  • Build executive-level partnerships: Cultivate trust across multiple business units and Fortune 500 leadership teams.
  • Turn regulatory goals into outcomes: Partner with Product and Engineering to deliver measurable compliance wins.
  • Create scalable enterprise playbooks: Design programs that drive consistent adoption across global enterprises.
  • Unlock new growth opportunities: Expand accounts to $5M+ ARR and transform flagship logos into long-term partnerships.
  • Lead with precision: Build account plans that align stakeholders, streamline decision and review cycles, and close opportunities with confidence.

Zania provides an AI-powered GRC platform that uses autonomous AI agents to automate security, privacy, and compliance tasks for enterprises. The platform is delivered as a B2B SaaS offering, enabling clients to subscribe and access AI agents, workflows, and dashboards that streamline risk assessments and compliance processes. The agents perform work across regulatory mapping, evidence collection, policy alignment, and security posture reviews, reducing manual effort and cutting assessment timelines from months to minutes. Zania differentiates itself with deep AI-security expertise from the founding team (including experience at major tech companies) and a focus on automating complex governance and regulatory tasks for regulated industries, rather than relying on generic automation. The main goal is to help enterprises simplify, accelerate, and maintain ongoing governance, risk, and compliance by automating tasks and workflows with AI agents.

Company Size

11-50

Company Stage

Series A

Total Funding

$18M

Headquarters

East Palo Alto, California

Founded

2023

Simplify Jobs

Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • Fortune 500 and Big 4 firms achieve 90% manual effort reduction and 80% cost savings.
  • $18M Series A from NEA fuels agent library expansion across full GRC lifecycle.
  • 10x ARR growth in six months with clients like Plaid and Stanford University.

What critics are saying

  • Drata erodes market share with 20% larger base and lower pricing in 6-12 months.
  • Vanta captures Fortune 500 clients via 100+ integrations, slowing ARR 30-40% in 12-18 months.
  • SEC probe exposes unverifiable accuracy claims, triggering client exodus in 18-24 months.

What makes Zania unique

  • Zania Autonomous TPRM shifts third-party risk assessments from human-led to agent-led execution.
  • Agents execute full vendor assessments from intake to audit-ready output with evidence trails.
  • Security, Compliance, and Privacy Agents automate SDL, questionnaires, and privacy adherence.

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Benefits

Company Equity

Company News

Business Wire
Feb 10th, 2026
Zania launches autonomous AI platform to slash third-party risk assessments from 8 weeks to under 1 week

Zania, an AI platform for governance, risk and compliance, has launched Zania Autonomous TPRM, which it claims is the first platform to shift third-party risk management from human-led processes to agent-led execution. The system autonomously executes vendor assessments from intake to final determination, including evidence collection and control evaluation. Early deployments across Fortune 500 companies and Big 4 firms report assessment timelines compressed from over eight weeks to under one week, with up to 90% reduction in manual effort and 80% lower costs per assessment. The platform enables organisations to scale coverage from 10% to 100% of vendors without additional headcount. Founded by leaders from Microsoft, Meta and Airbnb, Zania addresses a market expected to reach nearly $30 billion by 2033. The platform is now available globally.

Yahoo Finance
Feb 10th, 2026
The Vendor Questionnaire is Dead: Zania Launches Autonomous Third-Party Risk Management

The vendor questionnaire is dead: Zania launches autonomous third-party risk management. Business Wire New AI agents execute risk assessments end-to-end, enabling CISOs to achieve 100% vendor coverage without adding headcount. PALO ALTO, Calif., February 10, 2026-(BUSINESS WIRE)-Zania, the agentic AI platform for Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC), today announced the launch of Zania Autonomous TPRM. This is the first platform that shifts third-party risk management from human-led processes with AI assistance to agent-led execution with human oversight. Every CISO knows the math: a growing vendor ecosystem, a small risk team, and not enough hours to assess every third party. The result is a coverage gap that turns unassessed vendors into blind spots. This is exactly the kind of risk that shows up in board audit committees and post-breach investigations. Unlike AI copilots that assist humans with drafting or summarization, Zania's autonomous agents execute the assessment from intake to final determination. Agents scope vendors by business context, collect evidence from trust centers and public disclosures, coordinate vendor follow-ups, evaluate controls, and produce audit-ready output with a complete evidence trail. This enables teams to expand coverage without adding headcount. Third-party risk continues to be a primary driver of costly data breaches, with over 30% of all breaches now involving a supply chain partner [1]. As vendor ecosystems expand, GRC teams are caught in a persistent "coverage gap," able to deeply assess only their most critical vendors, leaving the rest as a growing blind spot. The global TPRM market is expected to reach nearly $30 billion by 2033 [2], yet legacy tools have failed to solve this core challenge, focusing on workflow organization rather than task execution. Early Results In early deployments across Fortune 500 enterprises and Big 4 firms, organizations using Zania report: * Assessment timelines compressed from 8+ weeks to under 1 week * Up to 90% reduction in manual assessment effort * Up to 80% lower cost per assessment * Coverage scaled from 10% to 100% of in-scope vendors without increasing headcount From the CEO "For years, 'AI in GRC' has meant a better autocomplete, such as drafting a response, summarizing a report, or helping with a single task. That's not what enterprises need. They need the assessment done, defensibly, at scale, without tripling headcount." "We built Autonomous TPRM to execute the work end to end. It is grounded in evidence, aligned to how risk teams actually operate, and traceable enough to survive an audit. The question isn't whether AI can help with GRC. It's whether your AI can do the job." - Shruti Gupta, Founder & CEO, Zania

FinSMEs
Sep 30th, 2025
Zania Closes $18M Series A Funding

Zania closes $18M Series A funding.

Morningstar
Sep 30th, 2025
Zania Secures $18M to Transform Compliance

Zania, an AI company for security governance, risk, and compliance, raised $18 million in a Series A round led by NEA. The funding will help Zania expand its engineering and go-to-market teams and accelerate its AI platform. Zania's AI agents automate complex compliance tasks, achieving results up to 30× faster and at 90% lower cost. The company has seen 10x ARR growth in six months and secured clients like Plaid and Stanford University.

Business Wire
Sep 30th, 2025
Zania Raises $18M Series A Led by NEA to Reinvent Enterprise Risk & Compliance with AI Agents

Zania raises $18M Series A led by NEA to reinvent Enterprise risk & compliance with AI agents.

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