Governance Lead - Digital Grid Management

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

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 opportunities to enhance operational efficiency, project controls, and governance effectiveness.
• Drive adoption of best practices, tools, and standardized methodologies.
• Support organizational change initiatives related to project delivery and governance.
• Foster a culture of accountability, transparency, and continuous improvement.
• Coach delivery leaders and project managers on governance maturity, evidence-based decision-making, and disciplined management of complex programs.

What You'll Need

• Bachelor's degree in Business, Engineering, Project Management, Finance, or a related field.
• 7+ years of experience in project governance, PMO, portfolio management, program management, or related operational leadership roles.
• Experience supporting complex technical project portfolios and cross-functional teams.
• Strong analytical skills with the ability to interpret and communicate business performance.
• Demonstrated ability to influence stakeholders without direct authority.
• Excellent communication, facilitation, and presentation skills.
• Proficiency with project management, reporting, and portfolio management tools.
• Demonstrated responsibility for governance or leadership of high-complexity, multi-year, multi-stakeholder technical programs, including material financial, contractual, schedule, and delivery risk.
• Working mastery of integrated project controls: requirements and change control, critical-path scheduling, cost and margin forecasting, risk quantification, and contractual/commercial escalation.
• Evidence of executive-level decision support, constructive challenge, negotiation, conflict resolution, and successful intervention in distressed or strategically critical projects.
• Ability to assess portfolio strategic alignment, prioritization, interdependencies, benefits realization, and organizational capacity—not solely individual project compliance.

Preferred:

• Experience in the utility, energy, engineering, or technology services industry.
• PgMP, PfMP, PMI-PMOCP certification or demonstrated equivalent portfolio-management capability, including portfolio strategic alignment, governance, performance, risk, and communications management.
• Experience with financial forecasting, project controls, and resource planning.
• Knowledge of governance frameworks, risk management, and operational excellence methodologies.
• Master's degree (MBA or related field).
• Strategic Thinking
• Portfolio & Program Governance
• Risk Management
• Process Improvement
• Change Management
• Customer Focus

Succes Measures:

• Improved portfolio visibility and governance maturity.
• Consistent execution of governance standards across projects globally.
• Timely identification and mitigation of business and delivery risks.
• Increased project predictability, profitability, and customer satisfaction.
• Effective executive reporting and decision support.
• Strong stakeholder engagement and organizational alignment.
• Measurable improvement in forecast reliability, early-warning lead time, and recovery effectiveness for high-risk projects.
• Documented executive decisions and interventions that improve strategic alignment, portfolio capacity utilization, and realization of intended business outcomes.

This role is a valuable part of our Digital Grid Management team at AspenTech. Learn more about the team here: Together We Build the Utility of the Future | Digital Grid Management | AspenTech

Work Location:

AspenTech has a global hybrid workplace for most of our roles. Employees are expected to work in the office 4 days per week and may work remotely 1 day per week, unless the employee has a reasonable accommodation or other approved exception to the hybrid workplace schedule. This role follows our 4-1 hybrid model and is based in Medina, Minnesota.

Work Authorization

AspenTech will only employ those who are legally authorized to work in the United States. This is not a position for which sponsorship will be provided. Individuals with temporary visas such as E, F-1(including those with OPT or CPT) , H-1, H-2, L-1, B, J or TN, or who need sponsorship for work authorization now or in the future, are not eligible for hire.

About Us

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, including AspenTech OSI products, helps power and utilities companies achieve superior real-time control, optimization and management for exceptional performance of complex energy networks.

If you're looking to make a difference every day and push the limits of performance, AspenTech is doing things no one else thought was possible. As a leading industrial software partner, we help companies all over the world run safer, greener, longer and faster.

With over 3700 employees and more than 60 global locations, AspenTech is meeting today's sustainability and business challenges head-on with unmatched expertise, cutting-edge AI-powered technology and a passion to innovate.

AspenTech is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. AspenTech does not discriminate against employees or applicants on the basis of age, race, color, religion, creed, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, pregnancy or related conditions, marital status, familial status, national origin, disability, medical condition, genetic information, citizenship, military service or protected Veteran Status or any other basis protected by applicable federal, state, or local law.

Reasonable Accommodation:

We will provide reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals who have a disability or sincere religious reasons to request accommodation, when necessary to enable the individual to participate in the job application or interview process. If you wish to request an accommodation, please contact us at recruiting@aspentech.com.

GDPR Privacy Notice:

AspenTech collects a range of personal information during the recruitment process.

This may include the following personal or special categories of personal data:

• recruitment information such as your application form and resume, references, qualifications and membership of any professional bodies and details of any pre-employment assessments;
• your contact details and date of birth;
• your gender;
• your marital status and family details;
• your identification documents including passport and driver's license and information in relation to your immigration status and right to work with us;
• information about your contract of employment (or services) including start and end dates of employment, role and location, working hours, details of promotion, salary (including details of previous remuneration), pension, benefits, and holiday entitlement;
• your racial or ethnic origin;
• any criminal convictions and offences.

Plan Participants Enrolled in the AspenTech US Medical Plans:

The Transparency in Coverage Final Rules require certain group health plans to disclose on a public website information regarding in-network provider rates and historical out-of-network allowed amounts and billed charges for covered items and services in two separate machine-readable files (MRF’s). The MRF’s for the benefit package options under AspenTech’s US Employee Benefit Plan are linked below:

Transparency in Coverage Rule - Machine Readable Files

Transparency In Coverage Rule And Consolidated Appropriations Act Overview and FAQS