Proposal Manager

CHAOS Industries•Columbia, WA

2d•Onsite

About The Position

CHAOS Industries is redefining modern defense with a multi-product portfolio that gives the ultimate advantage—domain dominance. The company's products are powered by Coherent Distributed Networks (CDN™), empowering warfighters, commercial air operators, and border protection teams to act faster, adapt rapidly, and stay ahead of evolving threats. CHAOS Industries was founded in 2022 and has raised a total of $1 billion in funding from leading investors, including 8VC, Accel, and Valor Equity Partners. The company is headquartered in Los Angeles, with offices in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, and London. For more information, please visit www.chaosinc.com . Role Overview As a Proposal Manager, you will lead the development and delivery of compelling, compliant responses for U.S. federal and defense opportunities across CHAOS Industries. You will own the proposal process from initial planning through final submission, coordinating cross-functional contributors, maintaining schedules and compliance, managing review cycles, and ensuring each response is complete, accurate, and delivered on time. This is a hands-on, writing-oriented role. In addition to managing the proposal process, you will work closely with engineers, product leaders, business development, capture, and other subject-matter experts to develop original technical content, tailor existing material to specific customer needs, and edit responses into a clear and consistent narrative. Success requires the ability to learn complex technologies, build content from limited source material, and write about new solutions for the first time. This is an exciting opportunity to join a rapidly growing team dedicated to delivering highly impactful technologies to the defense, national security, and critical industry sectors.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field, such as communications, marketing, English, computer science, engineering, or business, or equivalent professional experience.
Five or more years of experience managing proposals for U.S. federal, defense, or national security customers.
Demonstrated experience leading proposals from solicitation analysis and planning through review, production, and submission.
Significant hands-on experience writing and editing technical proposals, RFIs, white papers, or similar customer-facing responses.
Ability to quickly learn complex hardware or software products and translate technical information into clear, compelling content.
Experience managing multiple contributors, competing deadlines, and cross-functional dependencies.
Experience supporting both rapid-turn responses and larger, long-form or partner-supported proposals.
Exceptional writing, editing, communication, organization, and attention to detail.
Sound judgment and the ability to identify risks, resolve ambiguity, and maintain quality under demanding deadlines.
Ability to obtain a Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) clearance.

Responsibilities

Lead the development of proposals, requests for information, sources-sought and market-research responses, white papers, and other RFx deliverables.
Analyze solicitation instructions, evaluation criteria, amendments, and submission requirements.
Develop and maintain compliance matrices, proposal schedules, outlines, work assignments, review plans, and production checklists.
Lead proposal kickoffs, working sessions, status reviews, and formal review cycles.
Coordinate inputs from engineering, product, business development, capture, finance, contracts, legal, and other contributors.
Manage multiple concurrent responses, balancing rapid-turn submissions with longer and more complex proposals.
Identify schedule, content, compliance, and resource risks early and escalate issues that could affect submission quality or timeliness.
Lead final integration, production, quality assurance, portal upload, and on-time submission.
Interview engineers, product leaders, executives, and other subject-matter experts to develop accurate and understandable technical narratives.
Build content from a blank page when established proposal language or reusable source material does not exist.
Translate complex technical concepts into clear, concise, and customer-focused responses.
Tailor existing content to specific mission needs, use cases, requirements, and evaluation criteria.
Work with Business Development and Capture to incorporate approved pursuit strategies, win themes, and differentiators throughout the response.
Edit contributions from multiple authors into a consistent voice while preserving technical accuracy and appropriate qualifications.
Review final content for responsiveness, clarity, consistency, grammar, and compliance.
Lead cross-functional proposal teams that may include internal contributors, external partners, and subcontractors.
Maintain and improve proposal templates, reusable content, reference materials, checklists, and process guidance.