What you'll be responsible forAs Lead, Third Party Security, you will be a key member of Circle's Security team, responsible for advancing how we assess and manage security risk across our global ecosystem of partners, vendors, and other third parties. You will lead complex security assessments while building automation, AI-enabled tooling, and intelligence-driven workflows that make our third party security program faster, smarter, and more scalable. Working across Security Engineering, Legal, Procurement, and business teams, you will help embed security into third party decision-making and evolve the program from manual, point-in-time reviews toward proactive, continuous risk management.
What you'll work on- Lead complex technical security assessments of partners, vendors, and third party integrations, translating findings into pragmatic, risk-based recommendations.
- Evolve Circle's third party security assessment program from document-centric reviews toward a dynamic, scalable, and continuously adaptive capability.
- Design and build AI-enabled tooling and automation for evidence analysis, risk identification, monitoring, scoring, and assessment workflows.
- Establish proactive monitoring approaches that identify and prioritize emerging security risks across Circle's third party ecosystem.
- Partner with Security Engineering, Legal, Procurement, and business teams to define and apply security requirements throughout third party onboarding and ongoing oversight.
- Communicate material third party security risks, control gaps, and recommendations clearly to technical stakeholders, business partners, and senior leaders.
- Identify opportunities to improve third party security methodologies, standards, tooling, and processes while increasing assessment quality and reducing manual effort.
What you'll bring to CircleCore Requirements- 7+ years of relevant experience in cybersecurity, technology risk, or compliance, including meaningful experience with third party or vendor security assessments.
- Demonstrated ability to independently lead complex security assessments and evaluate control effectiveness beyond questionnaire or compliance-based reviews.
- Technical depth across areas such as cloud security, API security, network architecture, identity and access management, and cryptography.
- Hands-on experience using AI, GenAI, automation, or internally developed tooling to improve security, risk, or compliance workflows.
- Experience modernizing security, risk, or compliance programs through automation, improved methodologies, or process redesign.
- Strong communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to translate complex security risks into clear recommendations for technical and non-technical audiences.
Preferred Requirements- Experience in financial services, fintech, digital assets, or another highly regulated industry.
- Familiarity with third party risk and security frameworks or standards such as DORA, SOC 2, ISO 27001, or relevant regulatory guidance.
- Familiarity with blockchain and digital asset technologies, including crypto-native vendors, wallets, smart contracts, or decentralized infrastructure.
Circle is on a mission to create an inclusive financial future, with transparency at our core. We consider a wide variety of elements when crafting our compensation ranges and total compensation packages.
Starting pay is determined by various factors, including but not limited to: relevant experience, skill set, qualifications, and other business and organizational needs. Please note that compensation ranges may differ for candidates in other locations.
Base Pay Range: $140,000 - $185,000
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