Junior Governance and Risk Analyst

Boards and committees approve decisions every quarter, and the governance and risk file behind those decisions has to be sound before anyone signs. This role exists to hold that file from the ground up, for a small set of mandates, with principals reviewing the work alongside you. About The Role As a Junior Governance and Risk Analyst, you carry the analytical base of our governance and risk mandates from the first week. You will be reading board papers, mapping committee terms of reference, testing risk registers against what actually gets escalated, and writing the sections that partners take into the room. The work is scoped by the principal who will defend it, so you see the decision the document is meant to support before you start drafting. Expect to be asked what you think, and expect to be asked to show the evidence behind it. About Namaa Partners Namaa Partners is a strategy advisory firm based in Riyadh, working with organizations in Saudi Arabia and with companies that hold significant interests there. Our mandates cover corporate strategy, growth and market entry, operating model and efficiency, organization and talent, digital strategy, performance improvement, and governance and risk. We advise family groups and their holding companies, listed corporations, private equity portfolio companies, banks and insurers, government entities, and industrial operators. Every engagement is scoped by the principals who then deliver it, and most continue past the recommendation into board and committee rooms while decisions are implemented. What You Will Do • Review board and committee papers, charters and terms of reference, and produce a written assessment of where the design leaves gaps or ambiguity. • Build and maintain risk registers with our clients' own risk language, then test whether the register matches the issues that actually reach the committee agenda. • Map escalation paths and decision rights across a holding company and its operating businesses, and write up where authority sits in practice. • Prepare the working documents that support a mandate: issue logs, interview notes, comparison tables, and the first full draft of the governance section. • Sit in on client working sessions with a principal and turn the discussion into a short written note that the client can act on. What We Need From You • A degree in law, finance, accounting, business, public policy or a related field, and a record that shows you can handle structured analytical work. • Clear writing. You can take a complicated arrangement and explain it in three paragraphs without losing the point. • Comfort with financial and organizational material: financial statements, org charts, policy documents, and the occasional set of by-laws. • Working proficiency in Arabic and English, since much of the source material and many client conversations happen in Arabic. • Attention to version and detail. Governance work is judged on whether the right document reached the right committee on time. • Willingness to ask a question early rather than rebuild a document twice. What Success Looks Like In The First Year Within six months, you are running the document flow on a mandate yourself, with a principal checking the reasoning rather than the mechanics. Within a year, a client board should be able to point to a risk register that reflects its actual business, an escalation map that people follow, and a committee pack that arrives complete. The measure is whether the client uses the material in a real decision, not whether it looked polished in the meeting. You should also be able to explain what you got wrong and what you changed. How Decisions Get Made Principals scope every mandate and decide who staffs it. On a governance and risk engagement, the principal holds the client relationship and signs off on anything that leaves the firm, which means your drafts are read closely and returned with comments. Escalation goes straight to that principal rather than through layers, and the expectation is that you raise an issue the day you see it. As you earn trust on a mandate, your judgment enters the room earlier: you will be the one flagging that a register no longer fits the business before a client notices. We would rather hear a half-formed concern out loud than a finished document that hides one. What The Role Offers This is a permanent, full-time position, hybrid, based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. You will work directly with principals on mandates for established institutions in the Kingdom, including family groups, holding companies, banks and government entities. Entry-level here means real exposure from the start: you will see how board and committee decisions are prepared, challenged and implemented, not just how they are written down. The role suits someone who wants to learn governance and risk by doing it on live mandates rather than from a manual. The people who settle in here tend to be writers first and analysts second, comfortable sitting in a client's meeting where the vocabulary is theirs and the answers are not yet clear. They like being accountable for a number or a document that someone else will rely on, and they would rather be corrected than left unsure. If that describes how you work, this role will give you room to use it early.

A degree in law, finance, accounting, business, public policy or a related field, and a record that shows you can handle structured analytical work. Clear writing. You can take a complicated arrangement and explain it in three paragraphs without losing the point. Comfort with financial and organizational material: financial statements, org charts, policy documents, and the occasional set of by-laws. Working proficiency in Arabic and English, since much of the source material and many client conversations happen in Arabic. Attention to version and detail. Governance work is judged on whether the right document reached the right committee on time. Willingness to ask a question early rather than rebuild a document twice.

Review board and committee papers, charters and terms of reference, and produce a written assessment of where the design leaves gaps or ambiguity. Build and maintain risk registers with our clients' own risk language, then test whether the register matches the issues that actually reach the committee agenda. Map escalation paths and decision rights across a holding company and its operating businesses, and write up where authority sits in practice. Prepare the working documents that support a mandate: issue logs, interview notes, comparison tables, and the first full draft of the governance section. Sit in on client working sessions with a principal and turn the discussion into a short written note that the client can act on.