Director, Chief of Staff for the Office of the CISO

Sandisk understands how people and businesses consume data and we relentlessly innovate to deliver solutions that enable today’s needs and tomorrow’s next big ideas. With a rich history of groundbreaking innovations in Flash and advanced memory technologies, our solutions have become the beating heart of the digital world we’re living in and that we have the power to shape. Sandisk meets people and businesses at the intersection of their aspirations and the moment, enabling them to keep moving and pushing possibility forward. We do this through the balance of our powerhouse manufacturing capabilities and our industry-leading portfolio of products that are recognized globally for innovation, performance and quality. Sandisk has two facilities recognized by the World Economic Forum as part of the Global Lighthouse Network for advanced 4IR innovations. These facilities were also recognized as Sustainability Lighthouses for breakthroughs in efficient operations. With our global reach, we ensure the global supply chain has access to the Flash memory it needs to keep our world moving forward. Description The Director, Chief of Staff – Office of the CISO is a senior strategic and operational leader responsible for enabling the Chief Information Security Officer and Information Security leadership team to effectively execute the organization's cybersecurity strategy, priorities, and operating agenda. Reporting directly to the Vice President & Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), the Chief of Staff serves as a trusted advisor, organizational integrator, and execution partner to the CISO. The role connects cybersecurity strategy with execution by establishing operating discipline, coordinating priorities across the Information Security organization, managing strategic initiatives, preparing executive communications, and providing the CISO with timely visibility into organizational performance, risks, investments, and decisions. The Chief of Staff will work across Cyber Defense & Operations, Security Engineering, Security Architecture, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Cyber Resilience, Identity and Access Management, Application and Cloud Security, and other cybersecurity functions to ensure alignment with the CISO's strategic objectives. This individual will also serve as a primary coordination point between the Office of the CISO and senior leaders across Information Technology, Engineering, Legal, Privacy, Finance, Procurement, Internal Audit, Enterprise Risk, Human Resources, and business organizations. The successful candidate must combine strong business and operational leadership with sufficient cybersecurity and technical knowledge to operate credibly within a sophisticated security organization. This position requires exceptional judgment, executive presence, communication skills, organizational discipline, and the ability to operate effectively in a fast-paced, highly technical, global environment. Responsibilities CISO Strategy & Execution Foster strong relationships with all internal and external stakeholders. Partner directly with the CISO to develop, communicate, and execute the organization's cybersecurity strategy, priorities, and operating objectives. Translate the CISO's strategic direction into actionable programs, initiatives, milestones, ownership, and measurable outcomes. Maintain an integrated view of major cybersecurity initiatives across the Information Security organization. Ensure priorities across cybersecurity functions remain aligned with enterprise business objectives, technology strategy, risk priorities, and the evolving threat landscape. Identify organizational dependencies, execution barriers, competing priorities, and resource constraints that could impact strategic objectives. Drive follow-through on CISO decisions, commitments, and leadership priorities. Provide mentorship and guidance to team members. Maintain visibility into strategic commitments and ensure accountable leaders provide timely status, risk, and remediation updates. Support development and execution of the organization's multi-year cybersecurity strategy and transformation roadmap. Office of the CISO Operating Model Establish and manage the operating cadence for the Office of the CISO and Information Security leadership team. Develop structured leadership meetings, operating reviews, strategy sessions, planning cycles, and decision-making forums. Prepare agendas, decision materials, pre-reads, dashboards, and supporting information for CISO leadership meetings. Track decisions, commitments, actions, owners, and deadlines resulting from leadership discussions. Establish mechanisms to ensure issues requiring CISO attention are identified, prioritized, and escalated appropriately. Improve communication and coordination across cybersecurity functions and eliminate organizational silos. Establish consistent mechanisms for reporting performance, risks, dependencies, resource needs, and strategic progress. Continuously improve the operating effectiveness of the Information Security leadership organization. Strategic Program & Portfolio Management Maintain executive-level oversight of the cybersecurity strategic portfolio, including major programs, transformation initiatives, and technology investments. Establish portfolio governance and reporting mechanisms that provide visibility into scope, schedule, budget, risk, dependencies, resource requirements, and expected outcomes. Partner with cybersecurity leaders and program managers to identify execution risks and develop corrective actions. Ensure strategic initiatives have clearly defined objectives, accountable owners, milestones, success measures, and executive sponsorship. Facilitate prioritization when competing cybersecurity initiatives require the same resources or funding. Identify dependencies between cybersecurity programs and broader IT, infrastructure, cloud, engineering, and business transformation initiatives. Provide the CISO with concise, objective assessments of portfolio health and areas requiring leadership intervention. Drive closure of critical actions and commitments rather than allowing issues to remain unresolved between operating reviews. Executive & Board Communications Develop and coordinate executive-level cybersecurity communications on behalf of the CISO. Prepare executive presentations, briefing materials, talking points, decision documents, and strategic updates. Support development of cybersecurity materials for executive leadership, Board of Directors, Board committees, governance committees, customers, and other senior stakeholders. Translate complex technical cybersecurity issues into clear business risks, decisions, and recommended actions. Partner with cybersecurity leaders to ensure technical information is accurate while presenting it at the appropriate level for executive audiences. Maintain consistency in cybersecurity messaging, metrics, terminology, and risk communication. Anticipate questions and information requirements from executive and Board-level stakeholders and ensure the CISO is appropriately prepared. Coordinate executive communications during significant cybersecurity events in partnership with Cyber Defense, Legal, Privacy, Communications, and other stakeholders. Cybersecurity Metrics & Performance Management Establish and maintain an integrated cybersecurity performance management framework. Partner with cybersecurity leaders to develop meaningful KPIs, KRIs, operational metrics, maturity indicators, and strategic performance measures. Develop executive dashboards that provide visibility into cybersecurity posture, operational performance, significant risks, program progress, investments, and organizational health. Ensure metrics focus on meaningful outcomes and risk reduction rather than activity volume alone. Identify trends, emerging issues, performance gaps, and areas requiring CISO attention. Drive consistency in reporting across cybersecurity functions. Coordinate regular business and operating reviews of cybersecurity performance. Ensure leadership decisions and investments can be connected to measurable cybersecurity outcomes. Change Management and Major Incident Management Own and manage the organization’s IT Change Management process, ensuring infrastructure, application, cybersecurity, network, cloud, and end-user technology changes are properly assessed, approved, scheduled, implemented, and documented. Establish and maintain Change Management policies, standards, procedures, workflows, and governance aligned with ITIL practices and organizational risk requirements. Lead and facilitate the Change Advisory Board (CAB), including reviewing proposed changes, assessing business and technical risk, identifying conflicts and dependencies, confirming implementation and rollback plans, and documenting approvals. Maintain the enterprise change calendar and coordinate planned changes across IT teams to minimize scheduling conflicts, service disruptions, and business impact. Define and administer change classifications, including standard, normal, emergency, and high-risk changes, with appropriate approval and escalation requirements. Ensure significant changes include appropriate risk assessments, testing evidence, implementation plans, communication plans, validation criteria, and backout/rollback procedures before authorization. Monitor change execution and evaluate change success rates, failed changes, unauthorized changes, emergency changes, and change-related incidents to identify areas requiring corrective action. Provide core governance and operational oversight for the Major Incident Management program, ensuring critical incidents receive immediate coordination, escalation, communication, and executive visibility. Serve as the Major Incident Manager or escalation lead during Severity 1/Priority 1 and other significant technology incidents, coordinating technical teams and maintaining focus on restoration of business services. Initiate and facilitate Major Incident bridge calls/war rooms, ensuring appropriate technical resources, vendors, service owners, cybersecurity personnel, and business stakeholders are engaged. Coordinate timely executive and stakeholder communications during major incidents, providing clear information regarding business impact, restoration activities, risks, and current status. Ensure appropriate transition from Major Incident Management into Problem Management and Root Cause Analysis (RCA) following service restoration. Facilitate or oversee post-incident reviews, ensuring root causes, contributing factors, lessons learned, corrective actions, and preventive measures are documented and assigned. Track post-incident corrective actions through completion and escalate overdue or unresolved remediation items to IT leadership. Analyze relationships between changes and major incidents to determine whether failed, improperly assessed, or insufficiently tested changes contributed to service disruptions. Identify recurring incidents, systemic technology risks, and operational weaknesses and work with Infrastructure, Cybersecurity, Applications, Service Desk, and business teams to reduce recurrence. Develop and maintain operational metrics and executive reporting for change success, failed changes, emergency changes, major incident frequency, Mean Time to Restore (MTTR), RCA completion, and corrective-action closure. Partner closely with Cybersecurity Incident Response to ensure clear separation and coordination between IT Major Incident Management and cybersecurity incident response when an event involves both service availability and security concerns. Coordinate with Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BC/DR) teams when an incident reaches established thresholds requiring disaster recovery activation, business continuity measures, or executive crisis management. Conduct periodic reviews and tabletop exercises of the Major Incident Management process, identifying opportunities to improve escalation, communication, technical coordination, and recovery effectiveness. Support internal and external audit, compliance, and governance activities by maintaining evidence of change approvals, incident response activities, RCAs, corrective actions, and management oversight. Provide leadership with recommendations regarding operational risk, service stability, process maturity, and opportunities for automation within Change and Major Incident Management. Financial, Budget & Resource Management Consolidate the annual CISO operating and capital budgets, through working with the CISO direct reports to align on budget development, forecasting, variance management, and ongoing financial performance. Partner with the CISO to develop the multi-year cybersecurity investment strategy and financial roadmap, aligning expenditures with enterprise risk, regulatory requirements, and business priorities. Lead monthly budget reviews and forecasts, identifying variances, emerging financial requirements, potential savings, and areas requiring CISO or executive-level decisions. Partner with the CISO, Finance, Procurement, and cybersecurity leadership to develop and manage the Information Security organization's annual budget and financial planning process. Maintain executive visibility into cybersecurity operating expenses, capital investments, technology spend, professional services, and major contractual commitments. Coordinate cybersecurity investment planning and prioritization. Support development of business cases for major cybersecurity investments, technologies, programs, and staffing requirements. Monitor budget performance and identify significant variances, emerging requirements, and investment risks. Partner with cybersecurity leaders to evaluate resource allocation across competing priorities. Coordinate financial planning for multi-year cybersecurity transformation initiatives. Support vendor and technology portfolio reviews to identify opportunities for consolidation, optimization, cost reduction, or reinvestment. Ensure cybersecurity investments can be clearly connected to strategic priorities, risk reduction, operational improvements, or regulatory requirements. Workforce & Organizational Planning Partner with the CISO and cybersecurity leadership team to develop workforce and organizational strategies supporting current and future cybersecurity requirements. Maintain visibility into organizational structure, staffing levels, vacancies, critical skill requirements, contractors, and external service providers. Support annual workforce planning, headcount prioritization, and organizational design activities. Identify capability and talent gaps that could impact cybersecurity strategy or operations. Partner with Human Resources and cybersecurity leaders on workforce planning, recruiting priorities, succession planning, and leadership development. Support organizational changes and ensure roles, responsibilities, and accountability remain clearly defined. Help establish career development and talent management practices that strengthen the cybersecurity organization. Coordinate onboarding and integration of senior cybersecurity leaders when required. Cross-Functional Leadership & Alignment Serve as a primary coordination point between the Office of the CISO and key enterprise functions. Build strong working relationships with leaders across IT, Infrastructure, Cloud, Engineering, Legal, Privacy, Finance, Procurement, Internal Audit, Enterprise Risk, Human Resources, Communications, and business organizations. Facilitate resolution of cross-functional issues that cannot be effectively addressed within a single cybersecurity function. Ensure cybersecurity requirements and priorities are represented in major enterprise technology and business initiatives. Coordinate cross-functional initiatives requiring participation from multiple cybersecurity and technology teams. Identify organizational friction, unclear ownership, or competing priorities and facilitate resolution. Represent the Office of the CISO in meetings and initiatives when delegated by the CISO. Ensure decisions and commitments made outside the Information Security organization are communicated to appropriate cybersecurity leaders. Cybersecurity Risk & Issue Management Maintain executive visibility into significant cybersecurity risks, issues, incidents, audit findings, and remediation commitments. Partner with GRC and other cybersecurity leaders to identify matters requiring CISO review, decision, acceptance, or escalation. Ensure significant issues have clear ownership, remediation plans, target dates, and escalation paths. Coordinate cross-functional resolution of high-priority cybersecurity issues. Help distinguish between operational issues that can be resolved within individual teams and strategic issues requiring executive intervention. Provide the CISO with concise decision materials outlining the issue, business impact, options, risks, and recommended path forward. Track significant executive commitments through closure. Cybersecurity Leadership Team Effectiveness Serve as an extension of the CISO in driving alignment and accountability across the Information Security leadership team. Facilitate strategic planning sessions, leadership offsites, operating reviews, and organizational planning activities. Ensure cybersecurity leaders understand enterprise strategic priorities and how their organizations contribute to the broader security strategy. Promote collaboration across cybersecurity functions and help resolve ownership or accountability gaps. Identify opportunities to simplify processes, reduce duplication, and improve organizational effectiveness. Establish mechanisms for sharing information and strategic decisions consistently across the cybersecurity organization. Support the CISO in creating a leadership culture centered on accountability, transparency, collaboration, technical & operational excellence, speed, and measurable outcomes. Major Incident & Crisis Support Support the CISO during significant cybersecurity incidents and enterprise crises. Coordinate executive briefings, leadership communications, decision tracking, and cross-functional activities during major events. Partner with Cyber Defense & Operations to ensure technical incident information is translated into concise executive updates. Maintain visibility into major decisions, actions, risks, dependencies, and executive commitments throughout an incident. Coordinate with Legal, Privacy, Communications, IT, Business Continuity, and executive leadership as appropriate. Support post-incident executive reviews and ensure significant lessons learned and corrective actions are incorporated into strategic priorities. Ensure the CISO can remain focused on critical risk and decision-making by managing coordination and information flow around the incident. Requirements Demonstrated experience operating within a large, complex, global, and fast-paced technology organization. Strong understanding of cybersecurity organizations, technologies, operating models, and risk management principles. Working knowledge of cybersecurity domains including Security Operations, Incident Response, Security Engineering, Cloud Security, IAM, Application Security, GRC, Vulnerability Management, Cyber Resilience, and Security Architecture. Ability to understand complex cybersecurity and technology issues and translate them into clear business implications and executive decisions. Demonstrated experience supporting senior executives and working effectively with executive leadership teams. Experience developing executive and Board-level presentations, briefings, dashboards, and decision materials. Strong experience with strategic planning, portfolio management, operating models, and organizational governance. Experience developing and managing KPIs, KRIs, operational scorecards, and executive performance reporting. Strong financial acumen with experience supporting budgets, forecasts, business cases, investment prioritization, and resource planning. Demonstrated experience managing large cross-functional programs and strategic initiatives. Strong understanding of project and program management methodologies. Ability to manage sensitive and confidential cybersecurity, personnel, financial, and business information with exceptional discretion. Exceptional organizational skills with the ability to manage multiple priorities, deadlines, executive requests, and strategic initiatives simultaneously. Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with the ability to quickly identify the core issue within complex situations. Exceptional written and verbal communication skills. Demonstrated executive presence and ability to effectively engage with technical leaders, business executives, the CISO, executive leadership, and Board-level stakeholders. Proven ability to influence outcomes without relying on direct organizational authority. Demonstrated ability to operate effectively with ambiguity, incomplete information, and rapidly changing priorities. Education And Experience Bachelor's degree in Cybersecurity, Information Technology, Computer Science, Business Administration, Finance, Engineering, or a related discipline; advanced degree such as an MBA preferred. 10+ years of progressive experience in cybersecurity, information technology, technology strategy, business operations, management consulting, program management, or a related discipline. 7+ years of leadership experience managing complex technology, cybersecurity, strategic planning, operations, or transformation initiatives. Additional Information Sandisk is committed to providing equal opportunities to all applicants and employees and will not discriminate based on their race, color, ancestry, religion (including religious dress and grooming standards), sex (including pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions, breastfeeding or related medical conditions), gender (including a person’s gender identity, gender expression, and gender-related appearance and behavior, whether or not stereotypically associated with the person’s assigned sex at birth), age, national origin, sexual orientation, medical condition, marital status (including domestic partnership status), physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, protected medical and family care leave, Civil Air Patrol status, military and veteran status, or other legally protected characteristics. We also prohibit harassment of any individual on any of the characteristics listed above. Our non-discrimination policy applies to all aspects of employment. We comply with the laws and regulations set forth in the Equal Employment Opportunity is the Law poster. Sandisk thrives on the power and potential of diversity. As a global company, we believe the most effective way to embrace the diversity of our customers and communities is to mirror it from within. We believe the fusion of various perspectives results in the best outcomes for our employees, our company, our customers, and the world around us. We are committed to an inclusive environment where every individual can thrive through a sense of belonging, respect and contribution. Sandisk is committed to offering opportunities to applicants with disabilities and ensuring all candidates can successfully navigate our careers website and our hiring process. Please contact us at jobs.accommodations@sandisk.com to advise us of your accommodation request. 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