Essential Responsibilities
Proposal Leadership and Execution
• Independently lead assigned proposal efforts, including RFIs, RFPs, BAAs, white papers, sources-sought responses, and multi-volume proposals, from intake and kickoff through submission, ensuring all deliverables are compliant, complete, compelling, and submitted on time.
• Analyze solicitation instructions, evaluation criteria, amendments, and solicitation requirements; build proposal plans, compliance matrices, schedules, outlines, assignments, review plans, and communication cadences tailored to each opportunity.
• Lead kickoff meetings, status meetings, and formal reviews, including Pink, Red, Gold, and executive/deal-desk reviews as appropriate. Manage actions, decisions, risks, dependencies, and escalations.
• Guide proposal contributors across technical, programmatic, pricing, contracts, legal, finance, procurement, and subcontractor teams in developing responsive solution narratives that align with customer requirements, capture strategy, company roadmaps, and approved win themes.
• Establish and enforce document standards for structure, format, style, version control, and configuration management across all proposal volumes. This may also include the need to coordinate with graphics and technical contributors to ensure visuals effectively communicate the solution, discriminators, and evaluator-relevant information.
• Oversee final production, quality assurance, and submission activities, including file naming, portal readiness, version control, and confirmation of successful submission.
• Lead development of required proposal artifacts, including representations and certifications, letters, standard forms, intellectual-property disclosures, subcontracting plans, and partner inputs, with appropriate functional review.
· Lead final production, book checks, compliance validation, approval routing, portal submission, and contingency planning; confirm successful submission and retain required records. Proposal Operations Management
• Own the proposal department operating model, including opportunity intake, prioritization, resourcing, workload balancing, and escalation practices across concurrent pursuits.
• Maintain an integrated proposal calendar and capacity forecast; recommend staffing, contractor, and cross-functional support needs based on pipeline demand and critical deadlines.
• Develop, document, and continuously improve standard operating procedures, templates, checklists, review gates, and quality controls for proposal development and submission.
• Establish and administer proposal management tools, shared workspaces, version-control practices, content libraries, and records-retention processes that protect sensitive information and enable efficient reuse.
• Build and maintain a curated repository of approved boilerplate, past-performance materials, resumes, solution briefs, graphics, and lessons learned; ensure content remains current, accurate, and appropriately approved.
• Create dashboards and regular operational reporting that track proposal volume, on-time submission, win/loss trends, review outcomes, cycle time, workload, and process-improvement actions.
• Lead proposal retrospectives and win/loss knowledge capture; convert findings into actionable improvements to tools, processes, content, and team training.
• Support annual operating planning and budget inputs for proposal systems, external support, training, and department improvement initiatives.
Stakeholder Partnership and Team Development
• Serve as a trusted operational partner to Business Development and Capture, helping align pursuit decisions, bid schedules, solution-brief development, and proposal execution with business priorities.
• Support Business Development and Strategic Partnerships in preparing concise, compelling company and solution briefs for customer, partner, and investor engagements when requested.
• Coach proposal contributors on proposal best practices, compliance discipline, effective writing, review expectations, and use of standard tools and templates.
• Builds and manages a team of pricing and proposal specialists. Contribute to onboarding, training, and mentoring of proposal personnel and frequent contributors; support development of a scalable proposal operations capability.
• Maintain productive relationships with internal stakeholders and external teammates, suppliers, and consultants while reinforcing accountability, professionalism, and clear decision-making.
AI Enablement and Information Stewardship
• Evaluate and help implement approved AI-enabled tools that improve proposal development, content management, quality assurance, and operational efficiency.
• In partnership with Legal, IT, Security, and the Chief Administrative Officer, establish and maintain practical guidance for responsible AI use in proposal activities and related business processes.
• Support training and adoption of approved AI tools while ensuring handling of customer, company, export-controlled, proprietary, and other sensitive information follows applicable policy and contractual requirements.