About the Job: 

Sama is searching for a Governance, Risk, and Compliance Manager to lead and oversee the advocacy, standardisation, documentation, and monitoring through Sama policies, procedures, controls, and standards. In this role, you will be working with teams company-wide and senior leadership to maintain GRC program alignment with business objectives, risk management goals, and compliance with multiple internal and external requirements - including, but not limited to: EU GDPR, Kenya DPA, Uganda DPPA, ISO 27001, ISO 9001, TISAX, ISO 31000, ISO 22301.

You will also be responsible for leading and driving our current compliance efforts to ensure the timely completion of all audits and standardise and accelerate the management of audits to avoid gaps and duplication of effort. This includes managing the external & internal audit plans, updating existing controls, assisting in maintaining certifications, and mapping to future certifications.

Key Responsibilities: 

  • Work with relevant stakeholders to define and maintain the required policies, procedures, monitoring practices, and improvements to align with business objectives. 
  • Work with relevant stakeholders in defining the necessary level of knowledge on existing and emerging regulatory GRC requirements across the organization.
  • Develop the annual compliance work plan that reflects the organization's unique characteristics by coordinating internal compliance review and monitoring activities, including periodic reviews of departments.
  • Direct, manage, train and appraise the performance of the GRC team; delegate authority and responsibility to the team with supervision, accountability and review.
  • Identify the lack of and/or improvements to policy and process, assess the effectiveness of current policies and processes and recommend and implement required changes.
  • Monitor the maturity of the GRC program and work with the relevant stakeholders to identify improvement opportunities.
  • Own and have the overall responsibility for risk assessment, audit review, monitoring & managing compliance within the organization.
  • Provide strategic direction to the management team on GRC through clear and concise reports.

Minimum Qualifications: 

  • Bachelor’s Degree
  • 7+ years of related experience; 3 years of leading/managing teams.
  • Global Privacy experience and knowledge is an added advantage (EU, US, APAC ideally)
  • Prior experience establishing and maintaining compliance programs for regulations or certifications such as ISO, GDPR, SOC2
  • Strong project management skills with the ability to manage and coordinate multiple projects and prioritize work in a fast-paced atmosphere with minimal supervision.

Preferred Qualifications: 

  • Ability to comprehend, interpret, and apply the appropriate sections of applicable laws, guidelines, regulations, ordinances, and policies.
  • One or more industry certificates e.g. CRMP, CRCMP, CRMA
  • Ability to deal with ambiguity effectively.
  • Ability to discreetly handle highly confidential and proprietary information.
  • Analytical and goal-oriented; a strong bias toward action.
  • Deep commitment to building an ethical, world-class company team.
  • Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
  • Experience implementing and maturing compliance programs in a fast-paced start-up/emerging growth environment.

About Sama 

Sama provides high-quality training data that powers AI technology for Fortune 2000 companies such as Google, Walmart, Ford, Microsoft, and Marriott. We’re experts in data curation and data annotation for 2D and 3D image, video, and sensor data for machine learning algorithms.. Sama offers the highest quality SLAs in the industry, along with cutting-edge ML-assisted annotation tools, QA processes, and security and compliance standards. 

Founded in 2008 on the belief that “talent is equally distributed, but opportunity is not”, Sama is driven by the mission to expand opportunities for those who are underprivileged. As a certified B-corp, Sama has provided worker training programs to increase economic opportunity for more than 13,000 people from underserved communities. By connecting our customers with amazing talent in East Africa, we've impacted more than 59,000 workers and their dependents.

Today, our vision is to provide data scientists, ML engineers, and data operations teams with an indispensable, integrated platform for AI data preparation, labeling, and collection. 

For more information, visit www.sama.com.

More information can be found at:

Our Culture:

Sama is quite unique. We are a technology company with a social mission. People that thrive in a high-growth environment, love working on the bleeding edge of technology, and really care about having a positive impact on the world are a great fit for the Sama culture. Our core values are One Team, One Goal - Deliver. Period. - Trust & Transparency - Customer First - Humanity.

Our Benefits:

Sama is proud to offer competitive compensation corresponding to market data & level of experience. Sama also offers benefits packages based on country of employment, including but not limited to medical, dental, vision, and life insurance, holiday and vacation policies, professional development stipends and a paid sabbatical program. Our Talent Acquisition team would be happy to discuss our benefits packages with you in more detail during the interview process.

At Sama, we pride ourselves in being a diverse and equal opportunity employer.

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