Junior Governance and Risk Analyst

About The Role
The Junior Governance and Risk Analyst builds the analytical base of our governance and risk mandates and owns that work from the first week. You will read board papers, map committee terms of reference, test risk registers against the issues that reach the committee, and draft the sections that principals take into client meetings. Each piece of work is scoped by the principal who will defend it, so you know which decision a document supports before you start writing.

About Namaa Partners
Namaa Partners is a strategy advisory firm in Riyadh, working with organizations in Saudi Arabia and with companies that hold significant interests in the Kingdom. 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. The principals who scope each engagement are the ones who deliver it, and many mandates continue into board and committee rooms while decisions are put in place.

What You Will Do

• Review board and committee papers, charters and terms of reference, and write an assessment of where the design leaves gaps or ambiguity.
• Build and maintain risk registers in the client's own risk language, then check whether each register matches the issues on the committee agenda.
• Map escalation paths and decision rights across a holding company and its operating businesses, and record where authority sits day to day.
• Prepare the working documents behind a mandate: issue logs, interview notes, comparison tables and the first full draft of the governance section.
• Join client working sessions with a principal and turn the discussion into a short written note the client can act on.

What We Need From You

• A degree in law, finance, accounting, business, public policy or a related field, and evidence that you can handle structured analytical work.
• Clear writing: you can explain a complicated arrangement in three paragraphs and keep the point intact.
• Comfort with financial and organizational material such as financial statements, org charts, policy documents and by-laws.
• Working proficiency in Arabic and English, since much of the source material and many client conversations are in Arabic.
• Care with versions and detail. Governance work is judged on whether the right document reached the right committee on time.

What Success Looks Like
Within six months you run the document flow on a mandate yourself, and the principal reviews your reasoning instead of the mechanics. Within a year, a client board can point to a risk register that reflects its business, an escalation map that people follow and a committee pack that arrives complete. The test is whether the client uses the material in a decision. You should also be able to say what you got wrong and what you changed as a result.

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, so your drafts come back with written comments. Escalation goes straight to that principal, and we expect you to raise an issue on the day you see it. As you earn trust on a mandate, your view enters the client discussion earlier, for example by flagging that a register no longer fits the business before the client notices.

What The Role Offers
This is a permanent, full-time, hybrid position 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. As an entry-level hire you will see how board and committee decisions are prepared, challenged and implemented on live mandates, with a principal beside you on each one.