Bid Manager Americas

Location

Austin, United States of America

Thales is hiring an experienced Bid Manager who will lead capture, bid, and proposal activities for Identity and Access Management (IAM) opportunities, with a primary focus on Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) offers in the Americas region. This role is responsible for shaping pursuit strategy, coordinating cross‑functional contributors, ensuring governance and compliance, and delivering clear, compelling, and competitive proposals in support of Thales’s growth objectives.

• Collaborate with sales, marketing, partner management, product management, solution architecture, professional services, legal, finance, quote‑to‑cash, deal desk, and technical teams to develop pursuit strategies aligned with business goals and solution capabilities.
• Analyze customer needs, market trends, and competitive dynamics to define win themes, value propositions, and differentiators.
• Support bid/no‑bid assessments, capture planning, and pursuit strategy development across the opportunity lifecycle.

• Lead the end‑to‑end proposal development process, ensuring timely, complete, and compliant submissions.
• Coordinate cross‑functional teams to gather required inputs, including technical content, pricing, legal terms, compliance requirements, references, and case studies.
• Write, edit, and oversee proposal content that clearly communicates Thales’s strengths, solutions, and customer value.

• Partner with product management, professional services, finance, quote‑to‑cash, deal desk, and other stakeholders to support accurate and competitive pricing strategies.
• Analyze cost structures, pricing models, and commercial assumptions to support financially viable proposals.
• Ensure pricing and commercial inputs are aligned with deal strategy, approval requirements, and internal governance.

• Identify pursuit, commercial, delivery, and contractual risks and support mitigation planning.
• Ensure bids comply with legal, regulatory, contractual, and internal governance requirements.
• Escalate issues appropriately and maintain clear assumptions, dependencies, and decision points throughout the process.

• Engage with customers, partners, and internal stakeholders to understand requirements, expectations, and decision criteria.
• Build and maintain strong working relationships across the organization to keep pursuits aligned and moving forward.
• Facilitate collaboration among stakeholders across regions, functions, and time zones as needed.

• Review and edit proposal content for accuracy, consistency, completeness, and alignment with customer requirements and bid strategy.
• Ensure response quality, messaging discipline, and compliance with RFP instructions and internal standards.
• Support proposal reviews and readiness checks before submission.

• Prepare and support customer presentations, executive reviews, and pursuit updates.
• Help articulate Thales’s value proposition and address customer questions, concerns, and objections.
• Support negotiation preparation and contribute to the definition of commercial and contractual positions.

• Maintain a Loopio database of past bids, questions and answers, reusable content, product updates, proposals, and outcomes.
• Track lessons learned, identify improvement opportunities, and contribute to the continuous improvement of templates, content, and bid processes.
• Leverage AI‑enabled tools to improve drafting efficiency, content reuse, and proposal analysis, while ensuring accuracy, confidentiality, and human validation.
• Create and maintain a professional bid template to be used consistently across bids.

• Bachelor’s degree in business, science, engineering, communications, or a related field or equivalent work experience.
• 5+ years of experience in bid management, proposal management, capture management, or related commercial roles.
• Strong analytical and problem‑solving skills, with the ability to understand customer needs and translate them into effective pursuit…