Senior Proposal Manager

Marathon TS
Senior Proposal Manager
Hybrid Remote (Springfield, VA)

Marathon TS is hiring a Senior Proposal Manager who will own, fully and without ambiguity, the end-to-end development and delivery of compliant, compelling, and winning federal proposals across IT engineering, cybersecurity engineering, AI/ML operations, and cloud platform services. This is not a coordinator or a management role. The Senior Proposal Manager drives the process, enforces the standard, and is personally accountable for the quality and competitiveness of every submission that leaves this company.

The ideal candidate is a seasoned federal proposal professional with at least 10 years of hands-on experience managing complex proposals in DoD and civilian agency environments. They bring a commanding presence in review sessions, an exacting editorial eye, and the operational discipline to run multiple concurrent proposals without dropping a single deliverable. They are equally comfortable writing an executive summary from scratch as they are red-lining a technical volume or challenging a teammate's assumptions during a storyboard session.

This person will operate at the intersection of capture strategy, technical subject matter expertise, and executive leadership. They will enforce a Shipley-based proposal process calibrated to client's size, maturity, and growth trajectory, and they will be empowered to make real-time decisions to protect schedule, compliance, and win probability.

Key Responsibilities

Proposal Leadership and Execution

• Own the full proposal lifecycle from pre-RFP shaping and capture integration through final submission and post-submittal activities. You are the single point of accountability.
• Build and enforce proposal schedules, compliance matrices, annotated outlines, and volume-level deliverable plans across technical, management, past performance, and cost volumes.
• Enforce our Shipley-based proposal process adapted to client's size and operating tempo. Continuously improve the process based on lessons learned.
• Make authoritative decisions on content structure, resource allocation, and schedule adjustments when trade-offs are required. Escalate to leadership when necessary.

Content Development and Substantive Editing

• Develop administrative and management volume content from scratch, including executive summaries, management approaches, staffing and organizational plans, transition plans, quality assurance plans, and resumes.
• Perform substantive editing of technical content authored by engineers and SMEs to ensure clarity, compliance with Sections L/M, and alignment with win themes and discriminators.
• Ensure a consistent voice, compelling narrative arc, and clear discriminator emphasis across all volumes. Every section must read as if one sharp mind wrote it.
• Develop and refine proposal graphics concepts in coordination with graphic designers, ensuring visuals reinforce key messages and evaluation criteria.

Capture Integration and Pre-RFP Activities

• Collaborate with the President, BDE, and leads to identify, shape, and position client for upcoming opportunities.
• Lead Black Hat sessions, competitive analysis, and win strategy development. Translate competitive intelligence into actionable proposal messaging.
• Drive storyboarding and theme development sessions aligned to customer pain points, evaluation criteria, and client's competitive advantages.

Data Collection and SME Coordination

• Execute structured data calls with internal teams, on-site personnel, and subcontractor partners to gather technical, operational, and past performance inputs on schedule.
• Translate raw SME input into polished, customer-focused, evaluation-aligned proposal content. Do not wait for perfect inputs, extract what is needed and drive the content forward.
• Coordinate with teaming partners and subcontractors on content contributions, ensuring consistency with client's proposal standards and compliance requirements.

Past Performance and Proposal Library Management

• Maintain and continuously curate the client Proposal Library, including past performance write-ups, key personnel resumes, corporate qualifications, reusable boilerplate, and graphics.
• Ensure past performance citations are current, relevant, quantified, and mapped to specific solicitation requirements for each pursuit.
• Build a knowledge management discipline that accelerates proposal starts and reduces rework across pursuits.

Review Management (Color Team Reviews)

• Plan and execute Pink Team, Red Team, Gold Team, and Final Production reviews with structured agendas, evaluation criteria, and feedback mechanisms.
• Lead Red Team reviews as the process owner. Ensure reviewer feedback is captured, dispositioned, and incorporated with full traceability.
• Verify compliance, responsiveness, and scoring alignment prior to Gold Team and final production.

Production and Submission

• Oversee final formatting, graphics integration, page count compliance, and production quality for all submission volumes.
• Ensure full compliance with…