Location: Home based, UK 

Reports to: Sales Enablement Director

Hours: 37.5  per week

Salary: (Depending on experience) 

Role Overview

We're looking for an experienced Bid Manager to lead our bidding end to end — public sector and apprenticeship tenders, frameworks and DPS call-offs, and commercial proposals to some of the largest organisations in the country. You'll draft and prepare the responses, working with the Sales Enablement Director on approach and positioning before drafting starts, and on review before anything goes out.

Much of the job is project management, with a bid coordinator reporting to you: setting the bid plan and the dates contributors who don't report to you work to, and managing senior stakeholders on both sides — buyers and their evaluators, and our own directors through the approval gates.

The rest is building what we bid with — a response library that gets sharper with every submission, and AI workflows for scoping, drafting and review that live in our systems as method rather than in one person's habits. That's year-one work, and you'll shape it.

You'll also own how the function is resourced against what's coming: what each opportunity will take, what we can carry at once, and what we need in order to bid well rather than thinly. We're building the function now, so you'll have real influence over how it works and over how we present ourselves to the organisations we most want to win.

What you'll do

• Own our most complex bids end to end — major tenders and commercial proposals where there's no template to work from — from first sight of the brief through submission and presentation to outcome review, with the account executive on their own accounts.
• Write or rework the sections that decide the score, and build the case from scratch where there's no question set, reading the brief for what the buyer is really purchasing.
• Own the standard our written and designed material is held to: review what the coordinator and others in the team produce, and produce the bespoke material yourself.
• Make the bid/no-bid recommendation, agree approach and positioning with the Director before drafting starts, and own the quality review before final sign-off.
• Set the bid plan and the dates contributors across Delivery, Curriculum, Quality, Engineering, Finance and Legal work to, with the coordinator running the tracking, and escalate slippage early rather than absorbing it.
• Manage senior stakeholders on both sides: clarification questions and buyer contact through the process, directors and the executive team internally.
• Own the presentation stage — who attends, the brief and the rehearsal — so the room can carry the argument the document made.
• Lead and develop the bid coordinator, and be accountable for the operational base they run: portals, framework and DPS registrations and renewals, accreditation evidence and submission discipline.
• Own capacity planning and agree resourcing with the Director — what each opportunity takes, what we can carry at once, and what we need to bid well rather than thinly.
• Own the standard our response library is held to, and commission and ratify content from named owners across the business.
• Own the commercial and compliance material bids depend on — pricing, security, social value and intellectual property — working with the functions that supply it.
• Run loss debriefs and outcome reviews, and report monthly on submissions, win value, effort and outcome.
• Build the process, toolstack and AI workflows the function runs on, as reusable method held in our systems rather than in one person's habits.

Candidate Specification: 

Essential

• A track record of winning complex, high-value B2B bids — both structured tenders and proposals written from scratch. We'll ask you to talk through a specific win and a specific loss, and what you took from each.
• Demonstrable bid project management: several live bids at once, to deadline, coordinating contributors you have no line authority over.
• Credible with senior people on both sides — able to hold a director to a date, form a view on what a buyer really wants and defend it, and stand in front of an evaluation panel.
• Sets the standard for client-ready designed material, and produces it themselves for bespoke proposals where no template exists.
• Working knowledge of UK public sector procurement — ITTs, frameworks, DPS and portals.
• Uses AI as a working method rather than an occasional shortcut, with the discipline to check everything that comes out of it.

Desirable

• Experience leading or developing bid staff, and of building process and governance where it didn't previously exist.
• Able to position a response against named competitors — understanding what the alternative looks like to that buyer, not just describing what we do.
• Experience in learning, skills, apprenticeships, professional services or technology sold into large enterprises.
• Experience of capacity planning across a bid pipeline.
• APMP certification, or experience of bid tooling (Loopio, Bid Hive, AutogenAI) or the equivalent built from general-purpose tools.

Company Benefits: 

• Pension with 4% matched contributions, opportunity to opt into salary sacrifice scheme
• 25 days holiday + Flexi bank holidays + 1 day off on your birthday
• A day for volunteering
• Enhanced Maternity and Paternity Leave 
• Health & Wellbeing allowance of up to £30 per month
• Annual Summer and Xmas events
• Company socials including everything from Cambridge College formals, pub nights to team building events
• CPD Allowance alongside quarterly reflections to ring fence time for development and growth
• Private medical insurance and cash plan
• Holiday buy back scheme (up to 10 days p/a)
• Employee Assistance Programme with a dedicated company counsellor

Background to our Organisation

We are an education technology company that enables corporate and government organisations to achieve their business goals by educating their workforce with critical digital transformation skills to succeed in the AI era.

We deliver unique and innovative professional education that is accelerating the digital transformation of our clients, advancing the careers of their employees, helping people get into work and closing the digital skills gap. We are in a sector that is crucial to the economy and workforce, with a lot of opportunity for change and innovation. We are at the cutting edge of teaching applied data and digital skills, with our unique patented learning platform EDUKATE.AI offering our clients and learners a unique learning experience. EDUKATE.AI was developed with support from Innovate UK and provides all of our learners with 24/7 immediate feedback on their work, helping accelerate the learning process and providing a sandbox environment to experiment on real world datasets.

Since 2016, we have supported more than 15,000 learners across four continents with nearly 550,000 pieces of code submitted for feedback on EDUKATE.AI. We are trusted by some of the most recognisable brands in the world to educate their workforce, including Microsoft, the NHS, GSK, easyJet, the BBC and John Lewis. Our focus on applied learning to create business impact sets us apart - individual learners have reported applying their skills at work to generate recorded value of up to £40m. 

Our Values

At the centre of the way we work together and inspire each other to achieve success are these core values:

Entrepreneurial

We take initiative and show entrepreneurial spirit which fuels innovation at Cambridge Spark. This includes identifying opportunities for improvement, taking ownership for implementing solutions effectively and driving improvement by using proof of concepts to demonstrate the feasibility and value of their work.

Team Spirit

Everyone is part of building an open and transparent culture, communicating effectively to raise issues, discuss improvements and share the evidence used to make decisions.

Customer-focused

Our customers are at the centre of everything we do, inspiring us to create great work. We strive to build friendly, professional and lasting relationships with them to better understand and anticipate their needs.

Gold Standard

We are experts in our field and are constantly developing our technology and offering. We set the benchmark in our industry: both in what we offer customers and in how we deliver it.

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Cambridge Spark is an Equal Opportunities Employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any kind.  Cambridge Spark is committed to the principle of equal employment opportunities for all employees and to providing employees with a work environment free of discrimination and harassment. All employment decisions at Cambridge Spark are based on business needs, job requirements and individual qualifications, without regard to race, colour or ethnicity, ability or disability, gender or gender reassignment, sexual orientation, marital status, religion, age or any other status protected by the laws or regulations in the locations where we operate. Cambridge Spark will not tolerate discrimination or harassment based on any of these characteristics. Cambridge Spark encourages applicants of all ages.