Are you interested in being part of a team that identifies how satellite applications can address UK and global societal challenges? Do you want to help grow the UK Space sector through your bidding skills? If so, you may be what we’re looking for.

We are looking for Bid Managers, from Mid - Senior level to work with our technical and market-facing business development leads. This role gives you the opportunity to work alongside business development colleagues to develop compelling value propositions, capture best-practice, scope opportunities and new, innovative concepts and solutions.

You will be responsible for managing opportunities from qualification to contract award. This includes the introduction and implementation of all necessary bid procedures, governance, and processes. You will have a solid foundation in the methodology of bidding best-practice, but we also need someone who has the skills, behaviours, and confidence to take an agile and flexible approach that still delivers excellent proposals and a customer-focused service.

This is a highly networked role that requires an ability to work under pressure and to challenging deadlines. It requires strong people management and commercial skills. Experience of working on grant funding / CR&D opportunities is desirable, but not essential.

Key Responsibilities:

• Manage virtual bid teams and inputs from stakeholders, typically involving contributions from opportunity leads, technical specialists, partner finance, commercial, legal and delivery

• Support business development leads with capture planning, bid scoping and storyboarding

• Developing, resourcing and managing the bid programme for your bids

• Planning and monitoring progress against plan, addressing issues as they arise (with the support the opportunity owner, peers and the Head of Bid Management)

• Risk tracking and management throughout the bid

• Build and manage bid budgets, including translation to funder formats

• Ensuring all project delivery costs are inputted correctly, signed-off and comply with approval requirements

• Setting up and managing formal bid reviews (bid approval, red review, financial / ops review, approval to submit)

• Ensuring bid deliverables are to the appropriate quality, on schedule, on budget and in accordance with the client requirements

• Report progress of the bid(s) to the work winning community at regular intervals

• Getting and disseminating customer feedback on bids won and lost

• Instigating / facilitating lessons learned sessions to continuously improve the quality of bidding.

Stakeholder Management:

• Client engagement, conference/workshop attendance

• Work with and, as necessary, support external consortium partners with bid contributions

• Maintain relationships with SMEs and funding bodies

• Help to upskill and share best-practice knowledge with SMEs and Academia to improve the quality of proposals

• Engage and inform key internal stakeholder, including the Executive Team

• Manage virtual bid teams and inputs from a variety of stakeholders

• Key contact for the client's procurement team, managing clarifications and actions

Skills & Experience required:

• You will have experience in supporting and delivering winning opportunities, underpinned by industry best-practice.

• We are looking for someone with the confidence and desire to adopt an agile and flexible approach as necessary in our ever-changing R&D and innovation environment.

• We need someone who has the creative will to continually achieve success working with teams to sell the concept of a new solution or service.

• This experience will include activities from opportunity identification through to project delivery, where you have provided valuable input into opportunity qualification, win strategies, commercial discussions, and solution design.

• Strong communication skills are an essential part of the role, and you must be comfortable working with a variety of stakeholders, including SMEs, Academics and Funders.

• You will have sound commercial understanding, financial awareness, and risk management skills, and can manage complex, multi-workstream opportunities.

• You will also have a solid understanding and implementation of internal governance procedures, helping bid teams to adopt bidding best-practice.

How we work:

We strive to create a high trust environment that enables team members to bring their whole selves to work – this helps to create the foundations of an innovation culture.
Our shared values are critical to this:

• We care - for our people, our partners, and our planet

• We connect - and engage with people and ideas

• We learn - and grow, as people and as an industry

Underpinning this is our belief in great teams, our combined efforts will always deliver outcomes beyond that of any individual providing we are honest through debate, experiment and reflect, and create shared resolutions in support of our purpose. Live these values, work to our principles, take ownership to deliver, and we are certain you will thrive with us.

Important notice for applicants: We use tools to detect plagiarism and the use of AI or chatbots for applicant answers. If plagiarism, AI use (such as ChatGPT) or similar software are found to have been used in your application you will not be considered for this or future roles within the Satellite Applications Catapult.