Senior Bid Manager

Leonardo UK Ltd; Basildon; Hybrid; GBP 50,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

An exciting opportunity awaits for a Senior Bid Manager to join a dynamic team at a leading global high-tech company. This role involves orchestrating competitive proposals and driving a team towards success in the Aerospace, Defence, and Security sectors. You will leverage your leadership and bid management skills to navigate complex bid processes, ensuring high-quality submissions that resonate with clients. With a commitment to flexible working and a strong focus on employee well-being, this role offers an engaging environment where your contributions will help shape the future of the company. Join a forward-thinking organization that values innovation and collaboration!

Benefits

Flexible working hours

Company funded flexible benefits

25 days holidays plus bank holidays

Award-winning pension scheme

Employee Assistance Programme

Discounted Gym membership

Free access to online courses

Referral Incentive

Bonus scheme for employees

Qualifications

• Strong leadership and stakeholder management skills required.
• Experience in bid management for complex proposals is essential.

Responsibilities

• Lead competitive and non-competitive bids to successful conclusions.
• Coordinate inputs from various functional areas for bid strategies.

Skills

Leadership skills

Stakeholder management

Bid management

Numeracy

Communication skills

Capture experience

Understanding of bid processes

Financial awareness

Education

Relevant degree or equivalent experience

Tools

Bid planning tools

Price to Win methodologies

Job description

Job Description:

The opportunity:

At Leonardo, we have a fantastic new opportunity for a Senior Bid Manager to join the Business Winning Team within the Integrated Sensing and Protection Line of Business.

Leonardo is a global high-tech company and one of the key players in Aerospace, Defence and Security. Headquartered in Italy, Leonardo has over 45,000 employees, of which 7,000 are based in the UK.

The ISP Business Winning Team is responsible for the delivery of competitive proposals, including but not limited to the generation of statements of work, pricing, and customer value propositions. You will be responsible for the formulation of bid strategies and building and leading bid teams to develop winning solutions for our customers.

As a Senior Bid Manager, you will coordinate inputs from functional areas across multiple sectors and work with Sales Leads, Sector VPs, Integrated Capture Teams (ICTs), Integrated Project Teams (IPT), Engineering, and Capability Managers to define the bid strategy and implement win themes.

You will guide the capture team through the internal governance and approval gates ensuring that relevant business winning information is presented to the ISP leadership team. This will require excellent planning and stakeholder management skills. The Senior Bid Manager has accountability for the quality of bid submissions.

This role is based at our Basildon site with occasional UK travel to other Leonardo sites. We operate a custom working model and offer flexible working to support your wellbeing and work-life balance.

What you’ll do as a Senior Bid Manager:

• Leadership of both competitive and non-competitive bids through to a successful conclusion, ranging from tactical follow-on business through to multi-million-pound strategic initiatives.
• Work with the Sales team and ICTs to help drive business growth through best practice capture processes including facilitating strategic capture reviews (Black Hats, Blue Teams, etc.), developing win themes, storyboards, and compelling narratives that can be woven into bid submissions to deliver competitive Customer proposals.
• Coordinate and manage bids with a range of complexities throughout the capture and bid phases of the lifecycle.
• Analyse and break down customer requirements (PQQs, RFIs, RFPs, RFQs, ITTs etc.) into packages of work for the capture and bid teams.
• Work in collaboration with customers and partners, applying best practice, formulating bid strategies, and driving bid teams to develop winning solutions.
• Support the capture team during the contract negotiation phase, managing and implementing changes required to our bid submission to secure contract award.
• Schedule, plan, and drive bid activities including Win Strategy, Bid Kick-off, Answer Planning, WBS development, Bid Progress Reviews, Proposal collation, Proposal reviews (e.g. colour reviews) and Tender Approvals.
• Plan, lead, and challenge cost build-up and pricing activities from business functions.
• Lead bid teams to identify and analyse risks and opportunities, developing mitigation/realisation plans for action post-contract award.
• Forecast functional resource and budget requirements on bids you lead, proactively managing approved bid budgets.
• Manage and contribute to the writing of compelling proposals, drawing on the skills and experience of capture team members and subject matter experts.

What we need from you:

Personal attributes:

• Strong leadership skills in bid environments.
• Goal focused with a positive outlook that produces solutions rather than problems.
• Resilient to setbacks and has the ability to keep going and encourage others to follow.
• Confident presenter able to lead offer approval meetings with Senior Management.
• Good written and oral communications skills.
• High level of numeracy.

Qualifications, Experience, Skills:

• Relevant degree or equivalent experience.
• Capture experience.
• Experience acting as bid manager for complex commercial proposals, ideally in the defence sector (typically between £5M - £100M).
• Previous experience of MoD bid process and procedures.
• Proven history of winning bids.
• A clear understanding of all main roles within a bid team, and an ability to manage their complex interdependencies to ensure a successful bid submission.
• Understanding of best practice bid processes and tools (e.g., for bid planning, Black Hat, Red Team, Price to Win, etc.).
• Ability to generate complex cost bases and price builds.
• Financially and commercially aware.

Security Clearance:

You must be eligible for full security clearance. For more information and guidance please visit: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/united-kingdom-security-vetting-clearance-levels

Life at Leonardo:

With a company-funded benefits package, a commitment to learning and development, and a flexible approach to working hours focused on the needs of both our employees and customers, a career with Leonardo has never offered as many opportunities or been more accessible to as many people.

• Flexible Working: Flexible hours with hybrid working options. For part-time opportunities, please talk to us.
• Company funded flexible benefits: Access to private healthcare, dental schemes, Workplace ISA, Go Green Car Scheme, technology and lifestyle options (£500 annual allowance).
• Holidays: 25 days plus bank holidays, option to buy/sell leave and to accrue up to 12 additional flexi leave days per year.
• Pension: Award-winning pension scheme (up to 10% employer contribution).
• Wellbeing: Employee Assistance Programme with access to free mental health support, financial wellbeing support, and network groups to demonstrate our ongoing commitment to diversity & inclusion (Enable, Pride, Equalise, Reservists, Carers).
• Lifestyle: Discounted Gym membership, Cycle to work scheme.
• Training: Free access to more than 4000 online courses via Coursera and LinkedIn.
• Referral Incentive: You can earn a reward for successfully referring a friend or family member.
• Bonus: Scheme in place for all employees at management level and below.

For a full list of our Company benefits please visit our website.

At Leonardo UK, we believe that a diverse and inclusive work environment unlocks our people’s full potential and drives innovation and creativity. We work hard to offer a welcoming, accessible and inclusive place to work for all of our people, creating a culture where everyone can thrive, feel safe and have a sense of belonging and connection.

This is a great opportunity to bring your talents and form an integral part of Leonardo’s future. We can help you develop your skills and offer great opportunities to develop and grow, so why not join us.

Primary Location:

GB - Basildon

Contract Type:

Hybrid Working:

Hybrid