Commercial Manager

Direct message the job poster from Thales

Location: Cheadle or Templecombe – hybrid working arrangement, 3 days per week on site.

Are you an ambitious professional with a passion for delivering robust and commercial solutions? Are you looking to help shape and influence the future prospects of our business? Are you seeking a role that gives you a wide breadth and profile of exposure and excellent future career possibilities in a leading global organisation? Then look no further!

• Help shape and impact business opportunities and projects
• Visibility across the whole of Thales on the service we provide

• Performance‑related bonus
• Half‑day every Friday, usually finishing around 13:00 pm
• 28 days annual leave (plus bank holidays) plus opportunity to buy up to 40 hours/year (pro rata)
• 24 hours volunteering paid for
• Life cover
• 24/7 Employee Assistance Program and access to mental wellbeing app
• Employee discount shopping schemes on major brands and retailers

As Bid Finance Manager, you will be part of the Thales Bid Finance Team, delivering cost engineering and turning estimates into prices for the Thales UK businesses. This unique, dynamic role allows you to explore, support and influence prospects, working with other bid team members and Subject Matter Experts to help shape a business‑winning costed approach with the aim of continually improving the value of the output as it is used in our Project and Bid validation and governance.

Your responsibilities include: supporting estimate collation, management and cost‑to‑price modelling of a range of business opportunities; developing commercial awareness and stakeholder management to deliver high‑quality winning proposals; working with capture, bid and projects/programmes teams to generate robust and defendable costed solutions across development, manufacturing and support life cycles; and collaborating across multiple UK sites.

As the work is spread across a number of UK sites, the successful candidate will ideally be based near our Cheadle or Templecombe sites. However, the team ethos is to “be where our work needs us to be”, so short periods working at other Thales locations may be required (≈25%+).

• Degree in a relevant discipline or equivalent experience in bids, projects, engineering or finance.
• Experience of finance and performance metrics.
• Business acumen, demonstrated by commercial and financial awareness.
• Effective communication skills, able to articulate ideas and deliver information clearly and persuasively.
• Skilled in Microsoft Office Suite, especially Excel.
• Ability to work in a multi‑stakeholder environment and create clear, achievable goals.
• Excellent organisational skills, capable of delivering to agreed timescales in a pressured bidding environment, with appropriate attention to detail.

Due to the nature of the work that we do at Thales, many of our roles are subject to security restrictions. This role requires Security Clearance (SC). It would be advantageous if currently held, however, if not currently held, it is a requirement that the successful applicant undergo, achieve, and maintain SC Clearance prior to commencing employment. Please visit the UKSV website for further guidance.

To be eligible for full SC, you generally need to have resided in the UK for the last 5 years. In some circumstances, a minimum of 3 years’ residence in the UK over the last 5 years may be accepted, with additional overseas checks.

Mid‑Senior level

Full‑time

Finance and Project Management

Defense and Space Manufacturing