Public Sector Proposal Coordinator

Parallel Works; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 60,000 - 85,000; Full time

Job summary

Parallel Works is seeking a Public Sector Proposal Coordinator to manage federal, state and local opportunities and convert bid opportunities into submitted responses. You will screen solicitations, build compliance matrices, draft responses, and assemble submittal packages with a focus on AI-assisted drafting and rigorous fact-checking.

You will report to the Director of Operations and contribute to an expanding pursuit pipeline by turning opportunities into timely, compliant submissions while

Qualifications

• Aggressive, demonstrated use of AI tooling on real work.
• The judgment to know where AI output cannot be trusted, and the discipline to check it.
• Writing that is clear, correct, and organized under deadline pressure.
• 1 to 3 years in proposal coordination, contracts administration, bids and tenders, or technical writing.

Responsibilities

• Opportunity review: assess daily flow from SAM.gov, agency portals, and our scoring tool with bid/no bid/watch recommendations.
• Build the AI workflow: own prompts, templates, and content library for drafting solicitations.
• Compliance matrices: map instructions, criteria, and submission requirements to evidence.
• Drafting and assembly: generate first-draft narratives and assemble volumes within constraints.
• Verification: fact-check claims against sources; unverified items are cut or marked for request.
• Submittal and registrations: prepare submission packages and maintain SAM.gov registrations.

Skills

AI tooling usage

Proposal coordination

Editing & writing under deadline

Tools

SAM.gov familiarity

GSA schedules familiarity

Job description

About Parallel Works

Parallel Works builds and operates ACTIVATE, a control plane for high performance computing and AI. Our customers run large scientific and AI workloads across their own on‑premises clusters, Government and commercial cloud, and commercial GPU providers, and ACTIVATE gives them one way in to all of it. The high security boundary operates at IL5 under a Government authorization to operate at FedRAMP High. We are a small engineering company, so engineers here deal directly with the people using the systems.

About The Role

Parallel Works is hiring a Public Sector Proposal Coordinator to work the flow of Federal, state, and local opportunities and turn the ones we bid into submitted responses. The role screens solicitations, builds compliance matrices, drafts and assembles responses to requests for information, sources sought notices, requests for proposal, and quotes, and prepares the submittal package.

We want someone who uses AI tooling hard, as the default way the work gets done. Triage the opportunity feed with it, generate first‑draft narrative, restructure past content against a new solicitation's outline, and build the prompts and workflows that make the next response faster than the last. The point is to raise how many pursuits we can put out, and this role owns that number.

The counterweight is verification. The tools do not know what is true about our platform, our accreditations, or our past work, and they produce confident text that is wrong. Every AI‑drafted section gets a human edit and a fact check before it reaches a Government reader. The role reports to the Director of Operations, who sends every response.

What You Will Do

• Opportunity review: work the daily flow from SAM.gov, agency portals, and our internal scoring tool, and give each one a recommendation: bid, no bid, or watch. Ruling out a poor fit early matters as much as finding a good one, since it protects the engineers who would otherwise write to it
• Build the AI workflow: own the prompts, templates, and content library that turn a solicitation into a working draft, and keep improving them as the tools change
• Compliance matrices: break a solicitation into instructions, evaluation criteria, and submission requirements, and track every requirement to the section that answers it
• Drafting and assembly: generate first‑draft narrative, edit it to our standard, and assemble volumes to the required page limits, fonts, and file naming
• Verification: confirm every claim against a source: accreditation status, platform capability, past performance detail, pricing inputs. Anything unverified is cut or marked available on request
• Submittal and registrations: build the submission package, run the checklist, keep SAM.gov and portal registrations current, complete each solicitation's representations and certifications, and record receipt after it goes out

Requirements

• Aggressive, demonstrated use of AI tooling on real work. Come prepared to show what you built and what changed in your output. This is the first thing we screen on
• The judgment to know where AI output cannot be trusted, and the discipline to check it
• Writing that is clear, correct, and organized under deadline pressure
• 1 to 3 years in proposal coordination, contracts administration, bids and tenders, or technical writing. A strong new graduate who clears the AI and writing bars counts
• Precision on instructions. Page limits, fonts, file naming, and deadlines are pass or fail
• United States citizenship, since the role handles controlled unclassified solicitation material and Government submission portals

You do not need every item on this list.

Preferred Qualifications

• Exposure to Federal procurement: SAM.gov, sources sought notices, requests for information, GSA schedules, or NASA SEWP
• Time in a proposal shop, a contracts office, or a university grants office
• Scripting or automation, for example Python, for document assembly or AI workflows
• Enough technical background to judge whether a technical volume answers the question asked
• Familiarity with compliance matrices, capture processes, or color team reviews

Benefits

Medical, vision, and dental coverage, a 401(k) with company match, short term disability, and generous paid vacation and sick time.

Equal employment opportunity

Parallel Works is an equal opportunity employer. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.