Proposal Manager Jobs in Reston, VA (NOW HIRING)

*This position can be Hybrid in either McLean, VA or in Orlando, FL*

Description:

The Proposal Manager is responsible for organizing and managing the company's written responses, including Requests for Proposals (RFPs), Requests for Information (RFIs), and white papers. The primary goal of this position is to secure new business by delivering compelling, concise, and compliant responses that meet the requirements of both OneArc and our customers.

Key responsibilities include overseeing the end-to-end proposal process, coordinating input from cross-functional team members, leading writing assignments, and ensuring that all submissions strictly adhere to OneArc and customer guidelines.

To achieve this, the Proposal Manager collaborates closely with business stakeholders throughout the capture process. These partners include OneArc Account Leads, Customer Solutions Engineers, Customer Success Engineers, Revenue Operations Representatives, Program Management, Engineering, Legal/Commercial teams, and OneArc executives.

Key Areas of Responsibility:

• Process Management: Manage the company's end-to-end response process, ensuring strict compliance and accountability from all bid team members.
• Resource Development: Create, maintain, and update essential tools, templates, and boilerplate text. Continuously suggest process and quality improvements while sharing best practices across the organization.
• Schedule Management: Establish and enforce comprehensive timelines for all writing stages, reviews, and final approvals.
• Document Structuring: Collaborate with response personnel to devise the optimal response structure, producing skeleton documents populated with relevant boilerplate text.
• Content Creation: Leverage input from the US Growth team to draft highly compelling commercial responses and executive summaries.
• Information Gathering & Storyboarding: Partner with the Account Lead and Account Success Team, starting from the Kick-Off Meeting and Response Planning Document, to capture essential information. Utilize storyboarding techniques to effectively visualize and map out the response.
• Delegation & Strategy Alignment: Designate specific proposal sections to appropriate Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). Ensure the entire response team consistently emphasizes Win Themes, Unique Selling Propositions (USPs), and Technical Discriminators.
• Draft & Review Oversight: Oversee the iterative drafting process, ensuring all reviews are completed on schedule. Compile, format, and assemble the final, cohesive response to meet strict customer requirements.
• Approval Workflow: Secure all necessary internal approvals below the Executive level, ultimately passing the finalized, compliant response to the Account Lead for final sign-off.

Objectives:

• Response Leadership: Lead the successful delivery of OneArc's written responses by collaborating seamlessly with internal teams. Guide Sales, Solution Architects, and Product Management to ensure all submissions are accurate, persuasive, and highly competitive.
• Organization: Create and maintain essential tools, templates, content libraries, and boilerplate text, ensuring all resources remain up-to-date, comprehensive, and easily accessible.
• Coordination: Coordinate and facilitate proposal kickoff meetings with Customer Solutions Engineers and Growth teams. Establish response guidelines, assign sections to the bid team, and collaborate with marketing and art departments to procure impactful graphics and imagery that align with industry best practices.
• Scheduling: Plan and enforce the response schedule, encompassing all writing stages, iterative reviews, and final approvals. Outline the structural framework with input from the response team and generate foundational skeleton documents.
• Response Process: Champion strict adherence to the company's established response process. Continuously evaluate workflows to propose improvements, document procedures, and disseminate best practices across the organization.
• Writing: Draft and refine compelling content for non-technical proposal sections, including staffing plans, management approaches, resumes, and past performance narratives.
• Compliance: Analyze commercial bid requirements and maintain a rigorous commercial compliance matrix. Gather and verify all mandatory compliance documentation, such as insurance certificates and financial records.
• Finalization: Assemble, format, and conduct a meticulous final review of all response documents to ensure clarity, consistency, and absolute readiness for submission.
• Tracking: Monitor, track, and report on response data, metrics, and overall win rates to inform future capture strategies.

Skills:

A successful Proposal Manager requires a strategic blend of project management, writing, strategy, and communication skills to consistently create winning proposals.

• Business Writing: Strong business writing capabilities to create persuasive, compliant proposals tailored to specific customer needs and evaluation criteria.
• Project & Lifecycle Management: Expertise in managing the full proposal lifecycle, from pre-RFP planning to final submission, while strictly enforcing timelines, deliverables, and deadlines.
• Cross-Functional Leadership: Proven ability to coordinate and collaborate with diverse stakeholders, including Sales, Product, Technical Experts (SMEs), Legal, Finance, and Executive Leadership, to ensure strategic alignment.
• RFP Analysis & Compliance: Exceptional ability to read, analyze, and deconstruct RFP requirements to ensure absolute compliance, along with the editing skills necessary to shape content to meet stringent customer specifications.
• Strategic Strategy: Deep understanding of customer pain points to align proposed solutions effectively, coupled with working knowledge of formal bid/no-bid decision-making processes.
• Formatting & Visuals: Meticulous attention to detail for proofreading (grammar, clarity, consistency), combined with experience in proposal formatting and the creation of compelling visuals, infographics, and executive summaries.
• Document Management: Strong organizational skills to maintain, update, and govern content libraries, boilerplate templates, and archives of past submissions.

Education and Experience:

• Education: Bachelor's degree or equivalent professional work experience.
• Industry Experience: Minimum of 10 years of proposal writing and management experience within the simulation industry, specifically targeting the Department of War (DOW) and Business-to-Business (B2B) sectors.
• Proposal Management: Demonstrated experience managing the end-to-end proposal writing process, including leading and collaborating actively within multi-disciplinary capture teams.
• Best Practices: Deep knowledge and practical application of industry best practices in capture management, proposal development, and team leadership (e.g., Shipley or equivalent methodologies).

Additional Attributes:

Grace Under Pressure: Thrives in a high-stakes, deadline-driven environment. Maintains composure, focus, and a positive attitude while managing multiple concurrent proposal efforts.

Influential Leadership: Possesses interpersonal skills to guide, motivate, and hold cross-functional team members (including senior leadership and Subject Matter Experts) accountable to deadlines without having direct supervisory authority over them.

Detail-Oriented: Exhibits a relentless commitment to quality and compliance, with meticulous attention to detail in editing, formatting, and requirements tracing.

Strategic & Analytical Thinker: Naturally able to synthesize complex technical, financial, and operational information into clear, compelling, and unified narratives.

Highly Collaborative: A natural relationship-builder who fosters a cooperative, "one-team" environment across all departments involved in the capture process.

Travel:

Requires regularly recurring travel to and from the OneArc / BAE Systems Inc. offices to facilitate team collaboration and support business needs.