Senior Bids & Proposals Manager — Defence & Gov't

Whitespace; Belfast; On-site; GBP 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

EMI scheme

Company pension

Private medical insurance

4x salary death in service

Job summary

Whitespace is seeking a Commercial Manager to own the response process for UK government bids, including pricing, Statements of Work and the written bid. You will work with Product, Operations and Finance to ensure compliant, well‑written offers, through the CCO, COO and Finance approvals.

This senior role offers scope to shape templates, content library, approval process and house style for the commercial team.

Qualifications

• Five or more years in commercial, bid or proposal management for complex technology or services contracts.
• Hands‑on experience building pricing proposals and SoWs within a defined pricing framework.
• Fluency in UK public procurement: MOD and public sector frameworks, the Procurement Act 2023, evaluation methods and social value.
• Working knowledge of UK defence commercial terms, including DEFCONs.
• Clear, plain English writing and strong spreadsheet skills.
• Ability to run several bids at once to hard deadlines.
• Eligibility for UK Security Check (SC) clearance; existing SC or DV is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Build pricing proposals, schedules and rate cards in the customer's required format, with cost and margin validated by Finance.
• Draft Statements of Work with clear scope, deliverables, milestones, acceptance criteria, assumptions and exclusions.
• Review customer terms, including DEFCONs and framework terms, and flag risks to the CCO and COO.
• Lead RFI, PQQ, ITT and framework call‑off responses from qualification to submission, owning the bid plan, compliance matrix and review cycle.
• Prepare Whitespace's technical and commercial inputs to consortium and prime‑led bids.
• Build and maintain the content library: case studies, CVs, capability statements and boilerplate.
• Run bid/no‑bid inputs and keep an audit trail from first estimate to submitted price.
• Report response status and win rates to the CCO.

Job description

Whitespace is seeking a Commercial Manager to own the response process for UK government bids, including pricing, Statements of Work and the written bid. You will work with Product, Operations and Finance to ensure compliant, well‑written offers, through the CCO, COO and Finance approvals.

This senior role offers scope to shape templates, content library, approval process and house style for the commercial team.