Proposal Specialist

Street Level Strategy•Pasadena, CA

4d•$80,000 - $95,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Street Level Strategy is a growing public affairs firm with a high volume of proposal opportunities. In this role, you will prepare proposals that describe the features and benefits of Street Level’s constantly evolving services. You will edit, rewrite, and write technical and nontechnical text as necessary to prepare the most compelling possible proposals that highlight Street Level’s services. You will also be responsible for the creation of clear, visually persuasive graphics and for the timely delivery of a clean, error-free final product. Reporting directly to the Managing Partner and coordinating with Client Team Leads, this role will play a critical part in designing and defining SLS’s business strategy. This position is ideal for someone who has initiative, flexibility, and dependability to produce documents that reflect Street Level’s commitment to engaging and outreaching to communities.

Requirements

3 to 5+ years of experience in proposal or grant writing, preparing documents for publication, writing captions or headlines, and following editorial style guidelines.
Led or played a central role in leading efforts with multiple senior team members in executing a project from inception to completion.
Knowledge of the government or commercial proposal process.
Proven ability to work under the pressure of long- and short-term deadlines, while balancing both short- and long-term projects.
Confident in executing and implementing decisions made by leadership.
Track record of successfully planning and completing projects with a high degree of attention to detail, in an organized fashion.
Communicate clearly, document decisions well, and can bring structure without unnecessary bureaucracy.
Confident partnering directly with senior leadership and navigating trade-offs.
Must be able to have predictable and reliable attendance.

Responsibilities

Build and develop a pipeline across federal, state, local, and private sources, establishing the tools and routines that surface relevant solicitations early.
Perform detailed analysis of RFI/RFQ/RFP documents — evaluation criteria and applicable state or agency procurement rules — to identify requirements, constraints, and discriminators.
Provide leadership with honest bid/no-bid recommendations, including recommending which RFPs to pursue and have a chance to win.
Draft and submit questions to the contracting officer or procurement contact to resolve ambiguity before the response is built.
Track priority business pursuits from client team leads, as well as build a tracking mechanism to monitor all public business sites for federal, local, and state RFPs.
Develop working knowledge of target local, state, and federal agencies' priorities and procurement history, and translate it into positioning SLS can act on.
Identify and recommend structures that close capability gaps for specific RFP pursuits.
Produce capture plans for the firm's highest-value business pursuits, defining win strategy, discriminators, and gaps to close.
Own the proposal schedule end to end, with milestones, reviews, and author deadlines.
Coordinate input from teaming partners and subcontractors on the process, ensuring deadlines and milestones are met.
Build and maintain the compliance matrix or checklist for each submission, ensuring every requirement is addressed.
Enforce all format constraints — page counts, fonts, margins, volume structure, file naming and size — as hard limits.
Fact-check content and flag technical errors, unsupported claims, and inconsistencies before submission.
Hold final documents to firm editorial standards, drawing on shared editorial support for line-level proofing.
Write high-quality, responsive, persuasive content that answers what was asked and scores against how it will be evaluated.
Develop win themes and executive summaries that lead with outcomes that position SLS capabilities, services, and skills.
Synthesize complex technical and policy input from subject matter experts into coherent, readable narrative.
Edit and rewrite for clarity, logic, and argument structure, not just correctness.
Identify graphics needs and partner with Design to produce visuals that carry argument rather than decorate the page.
Run internal review cycles with defined purposes and reviewers, ensuring comments are adjudicated and reconciled rather than accumulated.
Coordinate with the client team on the budget, ensuring it is compliant, complete, and reconciled against the technical volume's stated approach, labor, and assumptions.
Assemble the final compliant package and manage submission through the required portal or channel, with time built in for portal failure.
Ensure the submitted package is complete, correctly assembled, and matches the approved version.
Stand up SLS's proposal function from the ground up: templates, style standards, review protocols, and a documented development process.
Build the reusable content library — past performance, resumes, capability boilerplate, graphics — so each pursuit starts from assets rather than a blank page.
Request and document debriefs, track outcomes, and translate customer feedback into changes in how SLS proposes.