Senior Manager of Proposals

Build the proposal engine that helps a growing mission-driven government contractor win, scale, and serve.

This is not a maintenance role. This is a builder role. The Senior Manager of Proposals will architect, lead, and institutionalize a disciplined, high-performing proposal function that directly supports revenue growth, strengthens proposal governance maturity, and improves ServBeyond's ability to compete for complex prime and subcontract opportunities.

For the right proposal leader, this is an opportunity to do meaningful work with visible business impact. You will work directly with executive leadership, capture, business development, solution leads, pricing, recruiting, operations, and technical subject matter experts to shape proposals that advance ServBeyond's growth strategy and expand our ability to support important public-sector missions.

The Opportunity

ServBeyond Solutions is seeking a Senior Manager of Proposals to serve as the central governance and execution leader for complex, high-value proposal efforts across prime and subcontract pursuits. This leader will own the proposal rhythm from pre-RFP shaping through final submission, ensuring that every pursuit is compliant, compelling, organized, and ready for executive review.

The ideal candidate is a senior federal proposal professional with 10+ years of progressive proposal development experience, including recent, consecutive leadership as a Proposal Manager or Senior Proposal Manager for a U.S. government contractor. They can operate confidently in a growing small-to-midsize GovCon environment, bring structure to complex, fast-moving inputs, drive accountability without slowing momentum, and keep teams aligned when deadlines are tight and expectations are high.

This role requires someone who brings more than schedule management to the role.. We need a proposal strategist and operational leader who understands both compliance and persuasion; someone who can create the matrix, lead the color team lifecycle with authority, protect version control, strengthen win themes, provide constructive challenge when content needs strengthening or timelines are at risk, and translate SME inputs into evaluator-ready stories that clearly communicate value, differentiation, and mission fit.

What You Will Own

Proposal Leadership and Execution

• Lead full lifecycle proposal efforts from pre-RFP shaping and kickoff through final submission.
• Develop and manage proposal schedules, outlines, compliance matrices, writing plans, review protocols, and delivery milestones.
• Serve as the primary proposal interface among capture, business development, solution architects, writers, reviewers, pricing, recruiting, operations, partners, and executives.
• Drive disciplined execution of the proposal lifecycle, including Blue, Pink, Red, Gold, and final submission-readiness reviews.
• Maintain version control, schedule discipline, contributor accountability, and submission readiness across concurrent pursuits.

Compliance, Quality, and Process Discipline

• Analyze RFPs, RFIs, RFQs, SOWs, amendments, instructions to offerors, evaluation criteria, and procurement requirements to identify compliance obligations, risks, and win conditions.
• Create and maintain compliance matrices, proposal outlines, writing plans, review tools, and proposal health reporting that make expectations clear for every contributor and executive stakeholder.
• Identify gaps, risks, timeline concerns, and narratives that need strengthening early; escalate issues with clarity and recommend practical mitigation steps.
• Build and institutionalize repeatable proposal governance practices, including templates, checklists, content libraries, review standards, readiness metrics, and submission quality controls.
• Use modern tools, including Microsoft 365 and AI-enabled productivity tools, responsibly to improve organization, formatting, compliance support, and writing efficiency while maintaining human judgment and proposal integrity.

Narrative Development and Review

• Translate capture strategy, win themes, discriminators, and technical inputs into clear, compelling, evaluator-focused proposal narratives.
• Write and strengthen executive summaries, management approaches, staffing narratives, past performance, resumes, corporate experience, and other non-technical sections.
• Interview SMEs and convert fragmented notes, bullets, and solution concepts into persuasive proposal content.
• Review proposal sections for clarity, compliance, responsiveness, persuasiveness, and alignment to evaluation criteria.
• Coach writers, SMEs, and reviewers to improve structure, storytelling, and customer focus.

Win Strategy and Competitive Positioning

• Partner with capture and business development leaders to translate capture strategy into integrated win themes and proposal messaging.
• Ensure discriminators are embedded throughout technical, management, corporate experience, past performance, and staffing narratives.
• Align proposal content directly to instructions, evaluation criteria, customer priorities, and competitive positioning.
• Challenge and refine technical and management narratives so they are differentiated, evaluator-focused, and clear about why ServBeyond is the right partner.
• Support executive decision-making by communicating proposal readiness, risks, recovery needs, and competitive posture.

Leadership, Influence, and Team Development

• Lead proposal contributors with confidence, calm, urgency, and professionalism in fast-moving, deadline-driven environments.
• Provide constructive challenge and clear guidance when content is late, incomplete, noncompliant, or not yet persuasive enough to win.
• Mentor proposal managers, coordinators, writers, and contributors in proposal discipline and quality expectations.
• Build trust with executive leadership by communicating status, risks, decisions, and tradeoffs clearly and early.
• Model a culture of accountability, learning, continuous improvement, and shared ownership of win outcomes.

Performance Expectations

• Within the first 6-12 months, establish a structured, repeatable proposal governance framework.
• Improve early-stage draft quality and reduce rework cycles.
• Demonstrate measurable improvement in proposal readiness metrics.
• Increase internal confidence in proposal execution.
• Contribute to revenue growth through successful awards.

What Success Looks Like

• Proposal efforts are more repeatable, reliable, predictable, and high quality.
• Teams have clear schedules, assignments, compliance expectations, review gates, and decision points.
• Submissions are on time, compliant, polished, and ready for executive approval.
• Proposal narratives are stronger, more customer-focused, and more clearly tied to win themes and evaluation criteria.
• ServBeyond increases its capacity to respond to multiple concurrent RFX efforts without unnecessary disruption, rework, avoidable compliance risk, or last-minute escalation.

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years of progressive federal proposal development experience.
• Minimum 5 years of recent proposal leadership experience as a Proposal Manager or Senior Proposal Manager for a U.S. government contractor.
• Demonstrated leadership of high-value federal pursuits, including $25M-$100M+ single-award contracts and $100M+ IDIQs, GWACs, or BPA vehicles.
• Shipley, APMP, or equivalent demonstrated proposal methodology expertise required.
• Strong understanding of FAR-based procurement environments, instructions to offerors, evaluation criteria, and common evaluation methodologies, including Best Value Tradeoff and LPTA.
• Proven ability to create proposal schedules, compliance matrices, outlines, review plans, writing assignments, readiness metrics, and final submission packages.
• Strong writing, editing, storytelling, and narrative-development skills, including the ability to turn SME input into compelling evaluator-ready content.
• Experience leading structured color team reviews and incorporating feedback into stronger, more compliant, more persuasive drafts.
• Ability to brief executive leadership on proposal readiness, risks, recovery needs, and competitive posture.
• Ability to lead independently while collaborating across teams in a growing small-to-midsize business environment with shifting priorities and compressed timelines.
• Advanced proficiency with Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, SharePoint, Teams, and structured tracking systems such as Jira, SharePoint trackers, or compliance trackers.

Preferred Qualifications

• APMP Practitioner or Professional certification, or comparable advanced Shipley-based training, preferred when the required certification is foundational-level.
• Experience supporting federal civilian, health IT, IT modernization, digital transformation, contact center, service desk, ServiceNow, cloud, cybersecurity, or professional services pursuits.
• Experience in small or mid-size GovCon growth environments.
• Experience mentoring proposal managers, coordinators, writers, or cross-functional contributors.
• Experience building or improving proposal infrastructure, including reusable templates, content libraries, playbooks, checklists, readiness metrics, or quality management processes.
• Familiarity with capture management, pricing coordination, oral presentation preparation, win/loss lessons learned, ISO/CMMI structured environments, and Power BI or similar reporting tools.
• Comfort using AI-enabled tools as accelerators for organization, first-pass drafting, compliance checks, and editing while preserving accuracy, confidentiality, and human judgment.

Compensation and Market Alignment

Base salary range: $160,000-$175,000, with performance incentive eligibility and eligibility for discretionary bonuses tied to individual performance, proposal function maturity, and company growth outcomes. Exceptional candidates with demonstrated proposal governance buildout experience, high-value federal pursuit leadership, and measurable revenue impact may be considered at the top of the range.