Bid Manager, Business

Location Hybrid
· Didcot, UK Harwell, Didcot, Oxfordshire (onsite at least 2 days per week)

Team Work Winning Services

Seniority Mid-level

• Closing:11:59pm, 8th Oct 2026 BST

• Work from home option
• Life Insurance
• Wellness programs
• Employee Assistance Programme
• Enhanced maternity and paternity leave
• Sabbatical Opportunities
• Salary sacrifice
• Team social events
• Extracurricular clubs
• Cycle to work scheme

8.46 (2584)

Bid Manager

The Challenge:

We are seeking a Bid Manager to work on our complex opportunities with our technical and market-facing business development leads. This role gives you the opportunity to share your end-to-end bid management skills and use them to work alongside business development colleagues. Together you will 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 capture and 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 agreed deadlines. It requires strong people management and commercial skills. Experience of working on grant funding / CR&D opportunities is desirable, but not essential.

• Manage virtual and in-person bid teams and inputs from stakeholders, typically involving contributions from opportunity leads, technical specialists, partners, finance, commercial, legal and delivery
• Be responsible for working on opportunities with the business development leads to deliver the end-to-end bid management process (Capture through to Contract Sign)
• Developing, resourcing and managing the bid programme for your bids which includes capture planning, bid scoping, shredding, and storyboarding
• Planning and monitoring progress against plan, addressing issues as they arise (with the support from the opportunity owner, peers and the Head of Work Winning Services)
• 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 capture and 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
• Getting and disseminating customer feedback on bids won and lost
• Instigating / facilitating lessons learned sessions to continuously improve the quality of bidding

• Report progress of the bid(s) to various stakeholders in the business at regular intervals
• Managing the handover from bid to delivery (Service Delivery Manager or Project Manager)

• Build and maintain strong relationships with clients, SMEs, funding agencies, and consortium partners
• Represent the organisation at client meetings, industry events, conferences, and workshops
• Lead or support external partners to produce high-quality bid contributions and align approaches
• Promote positive relationships and knowledge sharing across the wider business

• Proven experience leading and delivering successful bids using recognised industry best practice
• Strong understanding of the full bid lifecycle — from opportunity identification and qualification through to project handover and delivery
• Strategic thinker with an agile, adaptable approach suited to a fast-paced R&D and innovation environment
• Creative and persuasive, able to develop compelling solutions and inspire teams around new concepts and services
• Politically astute with the awareness and interpersonal skills to navigate complex stakeholder situations
• Excellent communicator, confident engaging with a wide range of stakeholders including SMEs, academics, partners, and funding bodies
• Strong commercial acumen, financial awareness, and risk management capability
• Experienced in managing multi-workstream opportunities with attention to quality and compliance
• Familiar with governance…