Senior Manager, Capture

Foundant + smartsimple

About The Position

This role is for a Senior Manager, Capture who will lead a team of experienced proposal and security response professionals. The position involves owning the response function end-to-end, managing the response calendar, submission logistics, and compliance. The individual will also be responsible for scaling how opportunities are identified and selected, partnering with sales leadership on pre-solicitation engagement, and driving the transformation of the function through modernization, AI-assisted workflows, and robust measurement. Additionally, the role requires partnering across various business units like Sales, Solution Engineering, Professional Services, Security and Compliance, Legal, and Product to establish working relationships and service levels, and shaping the function for future scale by defining roles, coverage models, and capacity plans.

Requirements

5+ years in proposal, bid, or capture roles, including at least 2 years managing proposal or bid professionals directly.
Direct experience inside a capture or proposal function that used recognized best practice: qualification gates, structured reviews, content library governance, and disciplined win/loss analysis.
A track record of running several concurrent pursuits against fixed, unmovable deadlines.
Demonstrated ability to secure and hold commitments from peer functions you do not manage.
Excellent writing and editing skills.
Fluency with formal procurement mechanics: RFI, RFP, RFT, question periods, addenda, best and final offers, and portal submission.
United States state, county, or city procurement experience.
Working comfort with SharePoint, Salesforce, and Excel.
Experience coaching experienced individual contributors, including remote and across time zones.

Nice To Haves

Hands-on experience putting AI to work inside a capture function: structuring content so it can be retrieved reliably, generating and reviewing first drafts, and holding human review standards.
APMP certification (Foundation, Practitioner, or Professional), or Shipley capture and proposal training.
Domain knowledge in grants management, nonprofit technology, public sector technology, or philanthropy.
Experience with security questionnaires such as SIG and CAIQ, and with the interface between a bid desk and a security or GRC function.
Experience supporting multiple products, particularly a portfolio formed through acquisition.

Responsibilities

Lead, manage, coach, and develop a team of experienced proposal and security response professionals.
Set priorities, workload, and quality standards, and protect the team from unmanaged demand.
Represent the function to sales leadership and the wider revenue organization.
Own the full response process, from intake and qualification through drafting, review, and submission.
Own the quality of every response that leaves the team, including final review before submission.
Own the response calendar, submission logistics, and compliance so that every submission is on time and fully responsive.
Make the go/no-go recommendation, and give sellers a fast, consistent, defensible answer.
Build and scale how opportunities are identified so that solicitations are seen early rather than late.
Expand sourcing coverage across procurement portals, aggregators, and public sector channels.
Sharpen opportunity selection to concentrate effort on opportunities with the largest revenue potential and strongest chance of winning.
Partner with sales leadership on pre-solicitation engagement.
Modernize the function through best-in-class qualification, content management, and review practices.
Design and implement practical AI-assisted workflows across the response process with human review built in.
Build the measurement layer: define metrics, establish baselines, and report on them.
Make learning from wins and losses a routine practice that feeds back into opportunity qualification and writing.
Build working relationships and agreed service levels with dependent teams (Sales, Solution Engineering, Professional Services, Security and Compliance, Legal, and Product).
Establish named expert contacts and reliable turnaround expectations for each product line.
Reduce late-stage risk by ensuring supporting materials are in place well before deadlines.
Deliver a point of view on how the function should be designed as it scales: roles, coverage model, and capacity.
Build the capacity plan that supports growth targets across products and geographies.