Sales Project Manager

Fives Landis Ltd; Louisville, Northern (KY, KY); Hybrid; USD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Fives Intralogistics Corp. in Louisville, KY is seeking a Sales Project Manager to lead proposals end-to-end. You will own budgets, schedules, and risk across pursuits, coordinating engineers and sales to ensure timely, compliant responses.

The role emphasizes initiative, accountability, and the ability to say no when necessary, with a clear path through Junior to Senior levels in Proposal Development.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent with combined education/experience.
• 8–12 years managing complex proposals, bids, or capital projects.
• Proven ownership of a project or proposal budget.
• Ability to say no under deadline pressure; strong prioritization.
• Certification (PMP) preferred but not required.
• Fluent with project scheduling tools and Excel literacy.

Responsibilities

• Review incoming RFPs, contracts, terms and SOW for risk before pursuit.
• Decide when opportunities enter the department and prioritize.
• Own the proposal budget by role and hour, escalate overruns.
• Own the specification compliance grid and confirm requirements.
• Build and own the proposal schedule, baseline, and workload leveling.
• Document bid strategy and hold team to it; manage risk input.
• Run quality checks, validate KPIs, capture lessons learned.

Skills

Proposal management

Budgeting

Scheduling

Risk assessment

Decision making

Scheduling tools

Reading specifications

Communication

Problem solving

Education

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent

PMP or equivalent (advantage)

Tools

Excel

Job description

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Take part in the Sustainability Industry!

Every day in 25 countries, we (9,000 people) create the sustainable solutions the world needs by inventing the technologies of tomorrow across the entire spectrum of industry: from metallurgy to advanced logistics, from cement plants to the tech industry, from the IoT to aerospace.

By Joining Fives, you'll become an entrepreneur who is involved in the design and management of the project from start to finish. Come and work with a group of passionate women and men, proud to be pioneers and above all proud to make the world move forward.

Legal Entity: Fives Intralogistics Corp.

Country: United States

State: Kentucky

Job Family: Sales Engineering and Proposals

Job Type: Permanent position

Work Location: Remote

Compensation:

Position summary

The Sales Project Manager runs the pursuit.

Every proposal has a schedule, a budget, a strategy, a risk position, and a set of deliverables with names against them. The Sales Project Manager owns all of it, so that the engineers on the pursuit can spend their time engineering.

The Sales Project Manager decides when work enters the department, what the pursuit costs us to produce, who owes what and by when, and whether the package is ready to go to the customer. Work is not scheduled onto this team except through a Sales Project Manager.

Innovation – We create a culture of relentless improvement of solutions and processes to make every day better.

Integrity – We are open, honest, and committed to giving the straight story every time.

Service – We serve our clients, families, communities, and most importantly our people who are empowered and safe in making decisions and taking actions that dare to make us better.

Ownership – We take full, personal, individual responsibility for our actions and our work.

Intake & qualification

• Review the incoming RFP, contract, terms and conditions and statement of work for risk before the pursuit is accepted.
• Decide when and whether an opportunity enters the department, and prioritize it against work in flight. Work reaches this team through an Offering Manager or it does not reach it.
• Own the proposal budget: what this pursuit costs Fives to produce, by role and by hour, and elevate before an overrun rather than after it.
• Own the specification compliance grid and confirm the proposal answers what was asked.
• Build and own the proposal schedule at milestone level, baseline it, track against the baseline, and level workload rather than absorbing peaks.
• Document the bid strategy and hold the team to it as the pursuit develops.
• Own the risk assessment: collect input from every contributor, document the position, and carry each mitigation into the CRD, the estimate, the proposal, the schedule and the subcontracts.
• Run the quality check before release, validate the KPIs, and capture lessons learned into the next pursuit and the department standards.

Contributes to

• The bid/no-bid technical recommendation
• T he technical basis for acceptance criteria and test procedures
• Mentoring, onboarding and 30/60/90 schedules
• The standardization program and product classification

Working with the rest of the team

Partner

They bring

You keep

Solutions Engineer The operation design and its breakdown into subsystem scope The schedule, the budget, and who works each subsystem

Application Engineer Equipment, detailed layout, manifest, BOM, CRD and the estimate The deliverable dates and the hours they are worked against

Controls Application Engineer Controls architecture and the electrical estimate The deliverable dates and the hours they are worked against

Senior Application Engineer / Senior Controls Application Engineer The estimating standard and sign-off on the numbers The gate that says the package is ready to leave

Sales / Account Management The customer relationship, commercial strategy, and the bid/no-bid decision Scope discipline, the pursuit schedule, and what it costs us to chase

Operations / Project Management Execution after award, and the acceptance criteria Turnover completeness at handover

Qualifications

Education and experience

• Bachelor’s degree, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• 8 to 12 years managing complex proposals, bids, or capital projects, including schedule and budget ownership.
• Required: demonstrated ownership of a project or proposal budget, with accountability for the outcome.
• Required: the standing to hold a deadline against pressure from Sales, Engineering and Operations. This role is only useful if it can say no.
• Preferred, not required: material handling, capital equipment, or systems integration experience. PMP or equivalent an advantage.
• Fluent with project scheduling tools and strong Excel. Technical literacy sufficient to read a layout, a manifest and an estimate, and to challenge what they say.
• An engineering degree is not required for this role.

Skills

Language. Reads and interprets specifications, contracts, terms and conditions, and statements of work. Writes clearly enough that minutes and action items settle arguments rather than start them. Presents pursuit status to senior management and to customers. Mathematical. Works with rates, percentages, hours and cost. Reads an estimate well enough to question it. Reasoning. Defines problems, collects data, establishes facts, and draws valid conclusions. Distinguishes a schedule slip caused by a blocker from one caused by drift.

Travel

Travel to customer offices and job sites as the pursuit requires, typically under 20%.

Progression

The Sales Project Manager role has three levels: Junior Sales Project Manager (under five years, carrying a defined scope under review), Sales Project Manager, and Senior Sales Project Manager. There is no Principal level in this role. The job grows with the size and complexity of the pursuits you carry rather than with headcount, and the technical route does not run through managing people. Line management is a separate route, through Supervisor, Manager and Director of Proposal Development, open by choice rather than by seniority.

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to use hands to finger, handle, or feel and talk or hear. The employee frequently is required to walk, sit, and reach with hands and arms. The employee is occasionally required to stand and stoop, kneel, crouch, or crawl. The employee must frequently lift and/or move up to 10 pounds and occasionally lift and/or move up to 25 pounds. Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, distance vision, color vision, and ability to adjust focus. Travel via automobile and/or commercial airline to customer offices for meetings, vendor’s plants, and job site to coordinate the conveyors or equipment with the building and installers.

Work environment

The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. While performing the duties of this job, the employee is occasionally exposed to moving mechanical parts, outside weather conditions, risk of electrical shock, and risk of radiation. The noise level in the work environment is usually moderate, unless performing work in shop or field conditions.