Senior Bid Manager

Job title: Senior Bid Manager (also recruiting for Bid Managers)

Location: Belfast, Northern Ireland (hybrid working – 3 days per week in the office vs. home)

Do you have a positive attitude combined with excellent interpersonal and motivational skills? Do you enjoy being able to generate or initiate innovative solutions? Do you pride yourself on leading bid teams, shaping compelling and competitive offers to clients? Then look no further…

Core Benefits:

On offer is a competitive salary and benefits package, which includes;

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

Our Opportunity:

Thales Integrated Airspace-Protection Systems (IAS-UK) has multiple great opportunities for Senior/Bid Managers to join the team, providing bid management leadership across the many and varied product/project areas.

You will be responsible for leading bid-management activities to ensure the successful delivery of a bid, or a number of bids. You will put your professional bid management capabilities to the test by giving rigour to change control, commercial awareness and stakeholder management.

You will be required to bring structure, clarity and governance to the process. You will help shape solutions to provide compelling offers to our customers. You will also manage a good build and manage strong relationships with internal and external key UK and international customers. As well as managing multi-disciplinary bid teams to deliver high quality business winning proposals.

You will need to apply business acumen to maximise Thales’ position to secure new business.You will also manage the preparation of prequalification response submissions to customers with the objective of securing an invitation to bid. Additionally, you will lead in Bid Kick-Off meetings, providing bid management direction and engagement with the Bid Team.

In addition to this, you will manage the creation of the bid deliverables, shaping a compelling offer and ensuring review and governance, leading to the creation of a high quality proposal. Lastly, you will be working effectively with Capture Leader to generate win themes that link customer needs with defined benefits of the Thales offering.

About You:

• You will have experience managing large, complex bids at a minimum value of £20m with significant business importance contexts relevant to Thales. We are happy to consider applicants from defence, heavy engineering (aerospace, rail, energy, marine), construction, or IT infrastructure backgrounds.
• As well as full business lifecycle management, including capture, qualification and developing capture plans and winning strategies.
• You will have experience of working across boundaries, including knowledge of commercial management, finance functions. You will also have - as a minimum - a working knowledge of industry standard approaches to bid management (such as Shipley Capture Bench).
• You will have the ability to successfully manage a bid team and to drive solutions to successful conclusion. Strong negotiation skills with the ability to deal with customers, partners, suppliers and other parts of the business (stakeholder management skills).
• Additionally, you will have comprehensive understanding of generic processes and techniques used to schedule bid management activities.
• Lastly, you will have comprehensive experience and knowledge of the bid life cycle

Security Clearance requirements:

Due to the nature of the work that we do at Thales, many of our roles are subject to security restrictions. This role requires you to be a sole British National from birth and achieve Security Clearance (SC) without any caveats. 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.