Director of Capture Excellence

LOCATION: Denver, CO; Huntsville, AL; Arlington, VA; Los Angeles, CA (HYBRID)

JOB STATUS: Full-time

CLEARANCE: Top Secret Eligible (TS/SCI eligible preferred)

CERTIFICATION: N/A

TRAVEL: Up to 25%, dependent on customer, pursuit, and enterprise growth needs

SALARY RANGE: $200K to $265K

Astrion has an exciting opportunity for a Director of Capture Excellence to build and scale the capture engine behind Astrion's next phase of growth. This is a senior enterprise role for a capture practitioner who has won complex federal work and now wants to raise the standard for how high-performing teams identify, shape, qualify, pursue, and win. The right leader will bring credibility in the room with executives, campaign leads, mission leaders, solution architects, proposal teams, and customer-facing growth professionals—and the practical discipline to turn capture excellence from a concept into a repeatable operating system.

At Astrion, capture excellence is not process for process's sake. It is the ability to create speed, focus, customer insight, competitive advantage, and proposal readiness across a mission portfolio built around critical customer mission areas. This role will help Astrion move with greater consistency across Integrated Air and Missile Defense; Layered Defense, Autonomous Warfare, and Integrated Fires; Critical Infrastructure Protection; Lifecycle Management and Cyber Warfare; Space Warfighting; and Exploration and Lunar Presence, winning new business that advances our solutions development and system integration business pivot.

Working with the VP of Capture, SVP of Campaigns, Business Development Executives, Mission Area Leads, Solutions teams, Proposals, Pricing, Contracts, Operations, and executive leadership, the Director of Capture Excellence will own the methods, tools, training, metrics, and coaching that help teams convert market insight into qualified pipeline, credible capture plans, differentiated solutions, disciplined gate decisions, and compelling proposals.

ENTERPRISE GROWTH CONTEXT

Astrion's mission model depends on integrated growth execution across business development, capture, proposal management, solutions, pricing, and operations. Campaign leaders drive the pursuit from idea generation and market shaping through proposal submission and award; mission leaders bring customer insight, capability roadmaps, solution credibility, and execution commitment. The Director of Capture Excellence strengthens that model by ensuring priority pursuits have the right discipline, artifacts, coaching, data, and executive readiness at the right time.

This is not a checklist-management position. It is a builder role for someone who can step into a difficult pursuit, see what is missing, and help the team sharpen the customer strategy, competitive position, solution, price-to-win approach, gate posture, and story. The goal is simple: help Astrion win more consistently, develop stronger capture leaders, and move faster without losing rigor.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS / SKILLS

• Experience:
  • Minimum of 20+ years of capture management, business development, proposal management, strategy, program management, technical management, military acquisition, defense acquisition, or related federal growth experience.
  • Proven record personally leading and winning complex federal capture efforts in the defense, intelligence, space, federal civilian, or mission-critical technical services market.
  • Experience improving, scaling, or institutionalizing capture management frameworks, gate-review practices, capture artifacts, and business-acquisition methods across multiple pursuits, teams, or business units.
  • Deep understanding of the full capture lifecycle, including market shaping, opportunity qualification, customer engagement, competitive assessment, solution development, teaming, price-to-win, proposal readiness, and award transition.
  • Experience developing capture plans, win strategies, value propositions, customer value maps, decision maps, competitive assessments, teaming strategies, Pwin assessments, executive gate materials, and pursuit-health reviews.
  • Experience coaching capture managers, business development leaders, proposal teams, technical SMEs, operations leaders, and executive stakeholders through complex pursuit decisions.
  • Working knowledge of FAR/DFARS, IDIQs, GWACs, task orders, OTAs, CSOs, recompetes, pricing strategies, and federal acquisition timelines.
  • Demonstrated ability to use market intelligence, CRM data, GovWin, FPDS, SAM.gov, Technomile or similar systems, AI-enabled analysis, and performance dashboards to improve capture quality and decision-making.
• Education:
  • Bachelor's degree in Business, Engineering, National Security, Public Policy, Communications, or a related field required; Master's degree preferred.
• Skills & Competencies:
  • Executive presence with the ability to engage senior leaders, growth executives, mission leaders, customer-facing teams, and technical experts with credibility and confidence.
  • Excellent facilitation skills, including the ability to lead customer value workshops, strategy reviews, decision-mapping sessions, win-theme sessions, gate reviews, and after-action reviews.
  • Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to convert complex capture issues into clear recommendations, executive briefings, and practical team guidance.
  • Strategic thinker with disciplined business judgment, including the ability to help teams decide when to prime, sub, team, invest, reshape, pause, or no-bid.
  • Continuous-improvement mindset with the ability to balance rigor, speed, and usability; this leader must create tools teams actually want to use, not bureaucracy that slows them down.
  • Ability to influence without direct authority across matrixed, geographically dispersed teams.
• Clearance:
  • U.S. citizenship required.
  • Active Top Secret clearance required.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS / SKILLS

• TS/SCI eligible, or ability and willingness to obtain one.
• Formal capture or proposal training, such as Shipley, APMP, or equivalent business-acquisition methodology.
• Experience leading or standing up a Capture Excellence function, Capture Academy, Capture Development Program, Capture Community of Practice, or similar enterprise growth enablement model.
• Experience developing competency models, skills assessments, onboarding plans, training roadmaps, and coaching plans for capture managers, campaign leads, and cross-functional pursuit teams.
• Experience supporting Defense, Intelligence Community, Space Force, DHS, NASA, federal civilian, allied, or other national security customers.
• Familiarity with Astrion-relevant mission areas, including Integrated Air and Missile Defense; Layered Defense, Autonomous Warfare, and Integrated Fires; Critical Infrastructure Protection; Lifecycle Management and Cyber Warfare; Space Warfighting; and Exploration and Lunar Presence.
• Experience helping an organization move from labor-centric pursuits toward integrated, outcome-based, solution-led growth.
• Experience using AI, knowledge management, reusable solution libraries, capture automation, or data analytics to improve capture development, proposal readiness, and win-rate outcomes.
• Experience supporting an organization through growth, integration, or transformation where common capture standards had to be established across multiple business units or mission portfolios.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Own and continuously improve Astrion's Capture Excellence framework, including capture standards, tools, templates, artifact expectations, gate-readiness criteria, best-practice guides, and lessons-learned processes.
• Establish and deliver a capture development program that strengthens the bench of capture managers and campaign leaders through training, mentoring, competency models, practical exercises, and individualized development plans.
• Lead a Capture Community of Practice that promotes best-practice sharing, reusable resources, after-action learning, and consistent capture discipline across the enterprise.
• Partner with campaign leads, mission area leaders, business development executives, solutions teams, proposal leaders, pricing, contracts, finance, operations, and recruiting to align capture strategy with executable delivery.
• Provide hands-on advisory and surge support for priority pursuits, including customer value workshops, strategy reviews, decision-mapping sessions, win-theme development, solution shaping, teaming strategy, price-to-win reviews, and capture-plan development.
• Improve opportunity qualification and pursuit health by helping teams assess customer access, mission need, incumbent strength, competitive posture, solution maturity, past performance, staffing, pricing, and executive investment requirements.
• Prepare executive-level briefings, gate-review materials, pursuit-health assessments, investment recommendations, and capture findings that are realistic, data-driven, and tied to customer mission outcomes.
• Define and track capture performance metrics, including qualification quality, customer engagement progress, gate readiness, solution maturity, teaming status, Pwin movement, CRM hygiene, proposal readiness, and win/loss trends.
• Partner with proposal leadership to ensure a clean transition from capture strategy to proposal execution, including win themes, discriminators, compliance strategy, color-review readiness, and proposal team alignment.
• Build repeatable methods for solution-led growth so Astrion teams can package mission engineering, AI-enabled software, cyber assurance, test and evaluation, systems engineering, operations, training, and mission-support capabilities into differentiated customer solutions.
• Coach and mentor capture managers, campaign leads, business development executives, and technical SMEs to improve pursuit discipline, executive communication, customer shaping, and decision quality.
• Identify patterns from wins, losses, lessons learned, customer feedback, competitor behavior, and market trends, then convert those insights into practical changes that improve how Astrion competes.
• Serve as a trusted advisor to senior growth leadership on capture readiness, process improvements, training needs, staffing gaps, and investments required to increase Pwin and long-term win rate.