Director of Governance Operations

Company Overview: Atreides helps organizations transform large and complex multi-modal datasets into information-rich geo-spatial data subscriptions that can be used across a wide spectrum of use cases. Currently, Atreides focuses on providing high-fidelity data solutions to enable customers to derive insights quickly.   

  

Atreides transforms the chaos of petabyte-scale, all-domain data—land, air, sea, space, and cyber—into real-time operational clarity. We are a fast-moving, high-performance international scale company. We trust our team with autonomy, believing it leads to better results and job satisfaction. With a mission-driven mindset and entrepreneurial spirit, we are building something new and helping unlock the power of massive-scale data to make the world safer, stronger, and more prosperous.  

 

Position Overview: The Director of Governance Operations ensures the company’s business development pipeline moves forward with clarity, discipline, and operational rigor. This role owns the Opportunity Review Board process, ensuring that opportunities progress  through structured gate reviews, receive the right level of cross-functional scrutiny, and move forward with clear decisions and documented alignment.  

 

The Director coordinates reviewers across leadership, product, legal, finance, compliance, PMO and delivery teams to ensure opportunities are assessed effectively while maintaining the speed required for competitive government and defence contracting environments. This role is responsible for crystallizing the company’s opportunity governance model, ensuring the right opportunities are pursued, risks are understood, and the organization commits resources with discipline and clarity.  

 

Working closely with Business Development, Product, Delivery, Legal, and Executive leadership, the Director of Governance Operations builds and runs a repeatable governance process that keeps business development moving at pace while maintaining operational and compliance discipline.  

 

Responsibilities:  

 

Opportunity Governance & Review Board Management  

• Maintaining a structured opportunity governance model supporting disciplined pursuit of contracts and partnerships  

• Running regular Opportunity Review Board meetings, ensuring opportunities move through the governance process efficiently  

• Coordinating cross-functional reviewers including leadership from BD, product, delivery, PMO, legal, finance, and compliance  

• Critically evaluating the feasibility of BD commitments against current product roadmaps and delivery capacity before they reach the Board  

• Ensuring reviewers receive clear opportunity briefs, documentation, and decision inputs prior to reviews  

• Documenting decisions, risks, and follow-up actions from each review  

• Ensuring the governance process supports fast-moving opportunity timelines without sacrificing decision quality  

 

Gate Reviews & Opportunity Lifecycle Management  

• Maintaining sales velocity with gate review criteria across the opportunity lifecycle  

• Ensuring opportunities pass through clearly defined stages (e.g., qualification → capture → proposal → commitment)  

• Ensuring resource commitments are aligned with company priorities and capacity  

• Maintaining clear documentation of go / no-go decisions and associated rationale  

• Ensuring leadership has visibility into pipeline risks, dependencies, and decision points 

Compliance & Regulated Contracting Support  

• Ensuring opportunity reviews incorporate relevant compliance, contractual, and regulatory considerations  

• Assisting in the operational navigation of facility and personnel security requirements as they relate to specific contract vehicles  

• Coordinating with Legal, Security, and Compliance teams to surface regulatory risks early in opportunity development  

• Maintaining documentation that supports audit readiness and contractual discipline  

• Ensuring governance practices remain aligned with regulatory expectations across jurisdictions  

 

Operational Readiness & Opportunity Handoff  

• Establishing and maintaining a structured handoff process that ensures delivery teams receive the information required to execute successfully  

• Supporting pre-award operational readiness by coordinating inputs from delivery, product, security, and compliance teams  

• Gathering operational requirements associated with new opportunities, including staffing, delivery structure, infrastructure needs, and compliance considerations  

• Defining the 'Minimum Viable Handoff' criteria, ensuring no contract is signed without a validated staffing plan, infrastructure budget, and risk register  

• Ensuring operational documentation, assumptions, and responsibilities are clearly communicated between teams  

• Helping maintain alignment between sales commitments, delivery capability, and operational planning  

 

Operational Support for Sensitive & Regulated Programs  

• Supporting operational planning for programs requiring enhanced security, information security, or operational security practices  

• Coordinating logistics and operational requirements for projects involving controlled information, classified environments, or sensitive operational contexts  

• Ensuring the organization is operationally prepared to execute projects with special handling requirements, secure environments, or controlled data access  

• Coordinating with security, compliance, IT, and program leadership to ensure operational requirements are properly implemented  

• Supporting planning for secure work environments, personnel access requirements, and operational safeguards where required  

• Helping identify operational risks associated with sensitive programs and escalating mitigation strategies to leadership  

  

Required Qualifications:  

• 8+ years of experience in operations, governance, program management, or business operations roles  

• Demonstrated experience coordinating complex cross-functional decision processes  

• Strong project and program management skills  

• Experience operating in regulated industries such as defence, national security, intelligence, or government contracting  

• Proven ability to balance structured governance with fast-paced operational environments  

• The ability to understand complex software or hardware product capabilities and translate them into governance and risk documentation  

• Strong organizational and facilitation skills with the ability to coordinate senior stakeholders