Director, Proposals (R6263)

About the role

Responsibilities

• Lead, coach, and develop proposal managers and their teams, establishing clear expectations for quality, accountability, collaboration, and professional growth.
• Build workforce and capacity plans aligned with the opportunity pipeline, regional demand, pursuit complexity, and emerging product requirements.
• Assign proposal leadership and resources across concurrent pursuits, making prioritization recommendations to the Sr. Director of Deal Strategy and Execution when demand exceeds capacity.
• Establish a team culture grounded in candid feedback, excellent writing, sound judgment, and shared ownership of results.
• Partner with account teams and Regional Deal Strategists early in pursuits to shape proposal strategy, win themes, discriminators, and supporting evidence around customer priorities and evaluation criteria.
• Translate complex offerings spanning autonomous platforms, software, payloads, integration, training, services, and sustainment into clear customer value narratives.
• Set the standard for executive summaries, technical and management narratives, graphics, and integrated proposal storytelling. Personally write, edit, and challenge critical content on priority pursuits.
• Ensure proposal claims are accurate, substantiated, and consistent with approved capabilities, configurations, scope, and delivery assumptions.
• Own the proposal lifecycle from intake and solicitation analysis through planning, development, reviews, production, and submission, including customer clarifications and revisions.
• Establish proposal schedules, compliance matrices, content plans, contributor assignments, and review milestones tailored to the size and complexity of each pursuit.
• Lead disciplined color team reviews that test compliance, persuasiveness, technical accuracy, and alignment with the approved deal strategy. Ensure findings are resolved before release.
• Hold teams accountable for complete, accurate, and timely submissions, with rigorous version control, production checks, and confirmation of delivery.
• Support both strategic pursuits and the broader portfolio of written responses, including requests for information, requests for proposals, and other customer submissions.
• Coordinate contributions from Sales, Product, Engineering, Finance, Legal, Contracts, Delivery, Partnerships, and other subject matter experts, with clear owners and deadlines.
• Ensure proposed scope, pricing, terms, partner responsibilities, and delivery commitments reflect decisions approved by the appropriate functional owners.
• Surface missing inputs, unsupported claims, unresolved decisions, and submission risks early. Escalate with clear recommendations, required decisions, and schedule implications.
• Integrate proposal milestones with established Opportunity Review and Management Review processes while reducing duplicate work and unnecessary meetings.
• Maintain an accurate record of submitted commitments, assumptions, exclusions, and approved revisions to support contracting and delivery handoffs.
• Build and maintain a searchable library of approved proposal content, templates, proof points, graphics, and reusable response modules, with named owners and review cadences.
• Connect proposal content to approved capability definitions and deal frameworks so teams can reuse validated material with confidence.
• Partner with GTM systems and tools leaders to improve proposal workflows, collaboration, content retrieval, and reporting.
• Lead proposal retrospectives and incorporate customer feedback, evaluation results, and lessons from wins and losses into team practices and reusable content.
• Measure submission timeliness, compliance, response cycle time, rework, content reuse, and win rate on submitted proposals. Use results to improve execution and inform resource decisions.

Requirements

• Significant progressive experience leading proposals for complex defense, aerospace, national security, or government technology opportunities, with a demonstrated record of delivering competitive, compliant submissions.
• Experience leading proposal managers and multidisciplinary proposal teams, including hiring, coaching, performance management, and resource allocation across concurrent pursuits.
• Demonstrated ability to develop winning proposal strategies and translate technical capabilities into clear, credible customer value.
• Strong command of solicitation analysis, compliance matrices, proposal planning, color team reviews, content development, and submission production.
• Detailed oriented with exceptional writing and editing skills, with the ability to improve executive narratives and technical content under demanding deadlines.
• Experience coordinating contributions and securing decisions across Sales, Engineering, Product, Finance, Legal, Contracts, and delivery organizations.
• Familiarity with government acquisition and contracting requirements, including the ability to identify proposal obligations and engage the appropriate experts.
• Sound judgment in handling sensitive information, managing competing priorities, and escalating risks with clear recommendations.
• A record of building practical processes and reusable content that improve quality and speed in a growing organization.
• Experience supporting both U.S. government and international defense proposals, including partner contributions and coordination of export and contracting reviews.
• Experience with offerings that combine hardware, software, integration, training, field services, and sustainment.
• Experience supporting autonomous systems, aviation, defense software, or emerging technology pursuits.
• Experience establishing or scaling a centralized proposals function while preserving responsiveness to regional account teams.
• Familiarity with Shipley methods, APMP certification, or comparable proposal management training.
• Experience applying approved automation and AI tools to proposal workflows with appropriate information protection and human review.