Governance Lead - Digital Grid Management

Aspentech; Medina (MN); On-site; USD 140,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

AspenTech is seeking a Governance Lead to drive governance, discipline, and delivery excellence within the Professional Services organization. You will partner with project managers, delivery leaders, finance, and executives to establish standards, monitor performance, and ensure projects are executed consistently.

The ideal candidate combines governance expertise with strong stakeholder management and executive communication to provide visibility, drive accountability, and enable informed

Qualifications

• Experience in establishing governance frameworks and operating models.
• Ability to lead portfolio governance reviews and drive accountability.
• Strong data-driven decision making and KPI development.

Responsibilities

• Establish, maintain, and continuously improve governance frameworks across the project portfolio.
• Lead portfolio governance reviews ensuring alignment with priorities and strategic objectives.
• Monitor project health, resources, financials, risks, and delivery metrics.
• Ensure consistent execution, documentation, reporting, and escalation processes.
• Facilitate governance forums and executive steering committee meetings.
• Apply risk- and complexity-based governance for large or high-visibility engagements.
• Provide insights to support strategic decisions and delivery recovery.

Skills

Governance

Portfolio management

Risk management

Reporting & analytics

Stakeholder management

Process improvement

Job description

The driving force behind our success has always been the people of AspenTech. What drives us, is our aspiration, our desire and ambition to keep pushing the envelope, overcoming any hurdle, challenging the status quo to continually find a better way. You will experience these qualities of passion, pride and aspiration in many ways - from a rich set of career development programs to support of community service projects to social events that foster fun and relationship building across our global community.

The Role

AspenTech is a global software leader helping industries meet the increasing demand for resources from a rapidly growing population in a profitable and sustainable manner. Our Digital Grid Management software suite helps power and utilities companies achieve superior real-time control, optimization and management for exceptional performance of complex energy networks. As a world leader in the Operations Technology (OT) field, AspenTech develops and supplies state-of-the-arc energy management, optimization, and control software solutions to energy utility companies worldwide.

The Governance Lead is responsible for driving governance, operational discipline, and delivery excellence across the Professional Services organization. This role partners closely with project managers, delivery leaders, finance, and executive stakeholders to establish governance standards, monitor portfolio performance, identify risks, and ensure projects are executed consistently and effectively.

The ideal candidate combines strong project and portfolio governance expertise with exceptional stakeholder management skills. They will serve as a key advisor to leadership, providing visibility into organizational performance, driving accountability, and enabling informed business decisions.

The role requires sound judgment in challenging project assumptions, evaluating competing priorities, and recommending timely executive intervention on high-complexity or strategically critical engagements.

Your Impact

Governance & Portfolio Management

• Establish, maintain, and continuously improve governance frameworks, standards, and processes across the project portfolio.
• Lead portfolio governance reviews to ensure projects are aligned with organizational priorities and strategic objectives.
• Monitor project health, resource utilization, financial performance, risks, and delivery metrics.
• Ensure consistency in project execution, documentation, reporting, and escalation processes.
• Facilitate governance forums, operating reviews, and executive steering committee meetings.
• Apply risk- and complexity-based governance, with differentiated oversight and escalation thresholds for large, technically complex, high-visibility, or contractually sensitive projects.
• Evaluate portfolio prioritization, capacity, dependencies, and trade-offs; recommend corrective actions and resource reallocation aligned with strategic value and delivery feasibility.

Risk, Compliance & Controls

• Identify, assess, and track project, operational, and business risks across the portfolio.
• Drive mitigation plans and partner with leaders to address issues before they impact delivery or customer outcomes.
• Ensure adherence to internal controls, policies, and established governance requirements.
• Support audit readiness, compliance initiatives, and continuous improvement efforts.
• Challenge the adequacy of project baselines and controls, including requirements and scope, schedule critical path, cost-to-complete, contingencies, technical performance, and contractual milestones.
• Oversee governance of material changes, claims, customer commitments, and regulatory or cybersecurity-related delivery obligations; ensure timely involvement of accountable legal, commercial, and technical experts.

Reporting & Business Insights

• Develop and maintain executive dashboards, KPIs, and performance metrics.
• Analyze portfolio trends and provide actionable recommendations to improve execution, profitability, and customer outcomes.
• Prepare governance reports and presentations for executive leadership.
• Provide data-driven insights to support strategic decision-making.
• Use leading and lagging indicators, forecast accuracy, milestone confidence, earned-value or equivalent performance measures, and scenario analysis to distinguish emerging risks from reported status.

Stakeholder Management

• Partner with delivery leaders, project managers, engineering leaders, and business stakeholders to drive accountability and execution.
• Support leadership in communicating governance expectations and organizational priorities.
• Facilitate alignment across cross-functional teams and help resolve conflicts or escalations when necessary.
• Act as a trusted advisor to the Sr. Director, Governance Practice.
• Engage credibly with senior customer sponsors and internal executives on delivery recovery, commercial exposure, strategic trade-offs, and decisions requiring cross-functional commitment.

Process Improvement

Identify opportun