Senior Bid Manager (Public Sector)

• This job is available in 3 locations:

  • Belfast, United Kingdom
  • Birmingham, West Midlands, United Kingdom
  • London, United Kingdom

  Our people love the exciting and meaningful work they do, the cutting-edge resources and technology they have access to, the benefits we offer and the great community we’ve built. Want to join them?

  As a Bid Production Manager in Kainos, you will be responsible for supporting the Business Development team with responsibility for bid team management and the integration and promotion of Bid Production into the wider Business Development capability. You will ensure adherence to formal processes, quality reviews, legal review and commercial authorisation. You will manage bid production team members and be responsible for ensuring appropriate allocation of work amongst the team.

  You will operate in a sales-focused role, requiring a combination of management, analytical skills, authoring skills, industry knowledge and a detailed understanding of the issues within the delivery process.

  You will be accountable for building relevant stakeholder relationships with the business development team, capabilities, account teams, senior delivery staff, commercial teams and customers. You will continually seek innovative ways to improve team productivity, enhancement of collateral and procurement success rates.

  You will be working collaboratively with other members of the Business Development team, spanning regions, sectors and practices as well as colleagues from other areas of the business including delivery, legal, marketing and operations.

  Your key responsibilities will include:

  • Managing complex bids - planning and managing all aspects of bid production, co-ordinating team activities and deliverables for clients, with experience of refining proposals to achieve the expected outcome for Kainos.

  Complex proposals require leading and leveraging a wide multi-disciplinary team. You will work closely with colleagues across all regions, sectors and practices as well as industry partners to ensure that proposal evaluations are maximised.  You will be expected to contribute to the content, approach and win strategy, challenging and recommending change, when appropriate, based on your experience gained from other bids.  You will also help to motivate and support the bid team throughout, to obtain the best input from individuals that results a high quality bid submission.

  • Building and developing strategic partnerships – You will excel in senior stakeholder management. You will build and maintain successful relationships with the wider BD team, capabilities, commercial, finance and delivery, with the clear objective of integrating and promoting Bid Production within the wider Business Development capability.
  • Putting people first & developing others – You’ll manage, coach and develop staff, with a focus on managing employee performance and assisting in their career development.
  • Providing Bid Production Innovation – you will be expected to be innovative around the following areas:
    • Content
    • Usability
    • Education
    • Solution Development
  • Supporting the BU strategic objective to up-skill delivery staff in sales related activities – you will be expected to contribute to the development of the Bid Production strategy across the wider company to continuously develop Presales awareness, onboarding and bid mentoring/coaching.
  • Continuous Improvement – you will seek to understand reasons for winning/losing bid and disseminate lessons learned to key stakeholders with a view to continuously improving processes, content and proposals.

  Minimum (essential) requirements:

  • Be an expert in the Bid Production processes and commercials including complex commercial offers, with a demonstrated ability to:
    • create bid production strategies that ensure success in winning £/$/€ multi-million deals, recognising that such proposals may need to be built up over an extended period of time
  • Demonstrated ability to communicate, present and influence credibly and effectively at all levels of the organisation
  • Expert networking skills and the ability to build strong and appropriate relationships with senior stakeholders
  • Strong commercial awareness and sound understanding of successful sales and Bid Production dynamics
  • Understands customer’s business drivers and issues and how these can be addressed via Kainos’ solutions
  • Ability to operate in a highly competitive and pressurised environment, making sensible decisions that don’t compromise Kainos
  • Ability to plan and meet deadlines in accordance with requirements
  • Excellent negotiation skills, both from a commercial and contract perspective as well as resolving escalations and diffusing issues
  • We are passionate about developing people – a demonstrated ability in managing, mentoring and coaching members of your team and wider community is important.

  Desirable:

  • Experience of leading Bid production teams for at least three years in a previous role
  • An appreciation and knowledge of technology delivery, agile methodologies, etc.

  WHO YOU ARE:
  Our vision is to enable outstanding people to create digital solutions that have a positive impact on people’s lives. Our values aren't abstract; they are the behaviours we expect from each other every day and underpin everything that we do. We expect everyone to display our values by being determined in how obstacles are overcome; honest when dealing with others; respectful of how you treat others; creative to find solutions to complex problems and cooperative by sharing information, knowledge and experience. These values, applied collectively, help to produce an outstanding Kainos person, team and culture.

  We're an inclusive bunch at Kainos and we believe in equal opportunity. We welcome applications from all walks of life, including those with criminal records. Everyone who is offered a position here undergoes a basic background check , however no one is treated differently due to their background where it isn't relevant to the role. It's important to note - failure to reveal information which is relevant to the position sought, could result in us having to withdraw the conditional offer of employment.

  In short: Having a criminal record will not exclude you from a career with Kainos. This depends entirely on the nature and requirements of the position, together with the circumstances and background of offences. Kainos has a policy on the recruitment of ex-offenders (available on request).