Full-Time
Forward Deployed Engineer
Posted on 11/7/2025
Zania
11-50 employees
AI-powered GRC automation platform
No salary listed
Company Does Not Provide H1B Sponsorship
Palo Alto, CA, USA
In Person
Relocation and immigration support available.
 Software Engineering (1) |
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- 2+ years in software engineering, solutions engineering, or technical consulting for enterprise SaaS.
- Proven experience deploying and configuring complex technical products in customer environments — ideally in security or compliance contexts.
- Strong understanding of APIs, cloud platforms, and enterprise security tools (e.g., IAM, SIEM, GRC/IRM platforms, TPRM systems).
- Comfort working with security, compliance, and legal teams, including navigating enterprise security and regulatory reviews.
- Excellent problem-solving and communication skills — able to bridge engineering, product, and business conversations.
- Startup builder mindset: resourceful, comfortable with ambiguity, and motivated to shape a new function from the ground up.
- Technical curiosity and ability to quickly understand AI models, agentic workflows, and developer-centric products.
- Lead technical deployments at Fortune 500 enterprises — from discovery through configuration, integration, and rollout.
- Design and run deep proof-of-concepts that validate Zania’s AI agents in complex security and compliance environments.
- Integrate Zania with enterprise systems (e.g., GRC tools, identity platforms, document stores, APIs) securely and reliably.
- Collaborate closely with CISOs, GRC leaders, and technical teams to tailor deployments to strict security and regulatory requirements.
- Partner with Sales during evaluations and onboarding to ensure technical fit and a smooth customer experience.
- Work with Product and Engineering to translate field learnings into product improvements and influence the roadmap.
- Contribute to internal tooling, deployment frameworks, and documentation to scale the forward deployment function.
- Experience in security, compliance, or risk engineering domains.
- Background in forward deployed engineering, technical consulting, or customer-facing roles at startups.
- Familiarity with LLMs, AI agents, or risk quantification frameworks.
- Prior experience at a high-growth, venture-backed startup.
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'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
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.
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
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.
Zania raises $18M Series A led by NEA to reinvent Enterprise risk & compliance with AI agents.