Manager, Governance, Risk & Compliance

About this role

ABOUT THE ROLE

The Manager, Governance, Risk, and Compliance leads Accela security governance, risk, compliance, audit, and customer trust programs. This role owns security policies, standards, risk management processes, control evidence, audit readiness, and third-party risk management.

The Manager, GRC partners with Security, Legal, IT, Engineering, Product, Finance, People, and customer-facing teams to ensure Accela meets regulatory, contractual, audit, and customer trust obligations.

This role is the primary owner for compliance programs and audit readiness across SOC 2, ISO 27001, GovRAMP, PCI DSS, HIPAA, NIST CSF, NIST 800-53, CCPA/GDPR, and other customer or regulatory requirements.

SPECIFIC RESPONSIBILITIES

• Lead the governance, risk, and compliance function across security policies, standards, risk management, audits, third-party risk, and control operations.

• Develop, maintain, and operationalize global security policies, standards, procedures, control documentation, and exception processes.

• Own audit readiness and ongoing compliance programs across frameworks such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, GovRAMP, PCI DSS, HIPAA, NIST CSF, NIST 800-53, CCPA/GDPR, and other customer or regulatory requirements.

• Lead GovRAMP and PCI DSS readiness, including control mapping, evidence collection, remediation tracking, stakeholder coordination, audit preparation, and audit support.

• Coordinate audit evidence collection, control testing, remediation tracking, auditor communication, and management responses.

• Maintain the security risk register, including identification, assessment, ownership, remediation, acceptance, exception tracking, and executive reporting of security risks.

• Partner with control owners across Security, IT, Engineering, Legal, HR, Finance, Product, and Operations to ensure control effectiveness and accountability.

• Manage third-party and supply chain risk management, including vendor security reviews, due diligence, risk assessments, contract security input, and remediation tracking.

• Support customer security reviews, questionnaires, trust center content, security documentation, and customer-facing compliance responses.

• Develop metrics and dashboards for audit status, control health, risk posture, vendor risk, policy exceptions, compliance readiness, and remediation progress.

• Support incident response and privacy incident processes by ensuring regulatory, contractual, audit, and customer notification obligations are understood and tracked.

• Partner with the CISO to communicate security posture, compliance progress, key risks, control gaps, and trade-offs to executives, customers, auditors, and regulators.

• Drive continuous improvement of the GRC operating model, including automation, evidence reuse, control rationalization, risk prioritization, and policy lifecycle management.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• 6+ years of experience in security governance, risk management, compliance, audit, third-party risk, or related cybersecurity roles.

• Experience managing or supporting audits and compliance programs for SOC 2, ISO 27001, GovRAMP, PCI DSS, HIPAA, NIST 800-53, or similar frameworks.

• Strong understanding of security controls, policy management, risk assessment, control testing, evidence collection, and audit readiness practices.

• Experience working with auditors, customers, internal stakeholders, and executive leadership.

• Experience managing third-party risk or vendor security review programs.

• Ability to translate complex compliance obligations into practical business and technical requirements.

• Strong project management skills with the ability to manage multiple audits, risks, remediation efforts, and stakeholder workstreams simultaneously.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

DESIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Experience in SaaS, cloud, public-sector technology, government technology, or regulated environments.

• Experience with GovRAMP, FedRAMP Moderate or High, PCI DSS, NIST 800-53, or other public-sector and payment security compliance frameworks.

• Experience with GRC platforms, trust centers, vendor risk platforms, policy management platforms, or control automation tools.

• Experience supporting privacy programs involving CCPA, GDPR, HIPAA, or similar requirements.

• Experience developing executive-level risk and compliance reporting.

• Relevant certifications such as CISSP, CISM, CISA, CRISC, ISO 27001 Lead Implementer, or ISO 27001 Lead Auditor.

Other

• May support incident response activities related to evidence preservation, notification obligations, contractual obligations, and control impact analysis.

• Very light travel may be expected for team or company offsites and industry conferences.

ABOUT ACCELA For nearly 20 years, Accela has been an industry leader in designing and delivering government software to improve efficiency, increase citizen engagement and enable the development of thriving communities. Today, citizens are savvy to how services should be delivered, and expect a consistently convenient, openly transparent view into their local government. While government agencies struggle to do more with less, our mission has never been more critical. Accela provides a robust, cloud-based platform of government software solutions that accelerate growth, efficiency, and transparency in communities of all sizes. From planning, to building, to service request management and more, Accela’s SaaS offerings level the playing field for small and medium governments and enable smaller agencies to leverage larger city technologies. Our open and flexible technology helps agencies address specific needs today, while ensuring they are well prepared for the emerging challenges of the future.

OUR COMMITMENT TO DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION Accela believes in developing and nurturing a workplace community where our differences are celebrated, and everyone feels a sense of psychological safety and belonging. Accela i

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