Axon - Lead Proposals Manager

London, England, United Kingdom - Hybrid3w ago

In Office Staff EMEA Government Project Manager Partner Manager Technical Writing Team Management Coaching Training Development Public Policy

Requirements

• Typically 8+ years of proposal, bid, tender, or comparable pursuit experience, including repeated end-to-end ownership of large, ambiguous, high-stakes submissions with significant cross-functional stakeholder load and formal review cycles. • Strong UK public-sector tender experience, including procurement routes, evaluation structures, frameworks and call-offs, mandatory requirements, submission mechanics, and evaluator expectations. • Experience with major policing, blue-light/public safety, central government, defence/security, justice, or complex public-sector technology procurements is strongly preferred. • Demonstrated experience leading responses with strict compliance, controlled submission, and potential disqualification or non-responsive risk, with sound judgment about execution tradeoffs, prioritization of competing risks and deadlines, and when Product, Legal, Pricing, or strategy approval is required. • Excellent proposal writing and editing skills, combined with the technical learning agility to challenge claims, identify solution risk, and turn uneven or highly technical inputs into clear, evaluator-focused, defensible content. • Demonstrated ability to influence senior stakeholders without direct authority, handle constructive conflict, and escalate with clear options and a recommended path. • Demonstrated ability to improve proposal execution beyond personally owned bids through standards, tools, processes, training, proof sources, or other reusable practices. • Demonstrated ability to coach Proposal Managers or other proposal practitioners and improve their independent execution quality. • Comfort with Microsoft 365 and SharePoint, Salesforce or comparable CRM, proposal-management platforms such as QorusDocs, Responsive/RFPIO, or Qvidian, and AI-enabled workflow tools. Formal proposal-development training or exposure to Shipley, APMP, Sant, or equivalent is preferred; strong tool judgment and learning agility matter more than experience with any one platform.

Responsibilities

• Location: hybrid schedule of Monday working remotely, and Tue-Fri in our London officeReports to: Director, Global ProposalsDirect Reports: N/A • Location: • Reports to: • Direct Reports: • At Axon, the Lead Proposal Manager is the senior owner of proposal execution for the region’s most complex pursuits. You will engage early in the procurement process, establish how the response will be run, make execution and compliance decisions within approved boundaries, and carry the proposal through submission and evaluation-period deliverables. This is a comprehensive individual-contributor role requiring expertise in the following areas: • Proposal Planning & Execution: Translate established win strategy into an executable response architecture, including workstreams, assignments, proof collection, review cadence, decision gates, and submission-readiness criteria. Build pre-bid readiness for anticipated strategic procurements with Sales and Bid Strategy. Drive resolution of product exceptions, compliance issues, and proposal commitments through the appropriate approval paths, while partnering with Sales, Bid Strategy, Pricing, and leadership on commercial, account-strategy, and bid decisions. • Proposal Planning & Execution: • Team Leadership: Lead large cross-functional teams across Sales, Solutions Engineering, Product, Legal, Security, Pricing, Finance, Services, Proposal Team members, and executive stakeholders. Drive decisions, close gaps, enforce deadlines, adjudicate conflicting review input, and coach Proposal Managers and Specialists to improve execution judgment, compliance discipline, and independent ownership. • Team Leadership: • Project & Compliance Management: Own proposal governance, milestones, compliance traceability, mandatory requirements, forms, schedules, portals, review cycles, final packaging, and submission readiness. Identify and manage disqualification and responsiveness risks, and preserve proposal context through structured handoff of assumptions, exceptions, commitments, and unresolved risks during clarification, presentation, and other evaluation-period activity. • Project & Compliance Management: • Proposal Writing & Solution Fluency: Develop technical and solution fluency to challenge weak claims, identify risk, and frame partial or non-compliant requirements carefully. Write, edit, and integrate high-value content when SME inputs are incomplete, inconsistent, overly technical, or insufficiently responsive, producing a coherent response for technical and non-technical evaluators. • Proposal Writing & Solution Fluency: • Regional Leadership & Stakeholder Collaboration: Build strong operating relationships with UK and Ireland Sales and technical leaders, monitor regional delivery health, identify where pursuits need additional support or escalation, and provide Proposal Leadership with recommendations on complex-pursuit routing and resourcing. Identify repeatable success and failure patterns and improve regional execution through reusable standards, tools, proof sources, training, and workflow changes. • Regional Leadership & Stakeholder Collaboration: • Typically 8+ years of proposal, bid, tender, or comparable pursuit experience, including repeated end-to-end ownership of large, ambiguous, high-stakes submissions with significant cross-functional stakeholder load and formal review cycles. • Strong UK public-sector tender experience, including procurement routes, evaluation structures, frameworks and call-offs, mandatory requirements, submission mechanics, and evaluator expectations. • Experience with major policing, blue-light/public safety, central government, defence/security, justice, or complex public-sector technology procurements is strongly preferred. • Demonstrated experience leading responses with strict compliance, controlled submission, and potential disqualification or non-responsive risk, with sound judgment about execution tradeoffs, prioritization of competing risks and deadlines, and when Product, Legal, Pricing, or strategy approval is required. • Excellent proposal writing and editing skills, combined with the technical learning agility to challenge claims, identify solution risk, and turn uneven or highly technical inputs into clear, evaluator-focused, defensible content. • Demonstrated ability to influence senior stakeholders without direct authority, handle constructive conflict, and escalate with clear options and a recommended path. • Demonstrated ability to improve proposal execution beyond personally owned bids through standards, tools, processes, training, proof sources, or other reusable practices. • Demonstrated ability to coach Proposal Managers or other proposal practitioners and improve their independent execution quality. • Comfort with Microsoft 365 and SharePoint, Salesforce or comparable CRM, proposal-management platforms such as QorusDocs, Responsive/RFPIO, or Qvidian, and AI-enabled workflow tools. Formal proposal-development training or exposure to Shipley, APMP, Sant, or equivalent is preferred; strong tool judgment and learning agility matter more than experience with any one platform.

Benefits

• Competitive compensation and UK retirement benefits • Company bonus scheme • 30 days paid time off • Private medical insurance and health cash plan • Paid parental leave • Numerous insurance coverages (disability, long-term sick etc.) • Health and wellbeing benefits • Learning & Development programs • Office amenities • ...and many more. • Benefits and eligibility are governed by Axon's applicable UK plans and policies and may vary based on the nature of your employment and work location. • Don’t meet every single requirement? That's ok. At Axon, we Aim Far. We think big with a long-term view because we want to reinvent the world to be a safer, better place. We are also committed to building diverse teams that reflect the communities we serve. • Studies have shown that women and people of color are less likely to apply to jobs unless they check every box in the job description. If you’re excited about this role and our mission to Protect Life but your experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification listed here, we encourage you to apply anyways. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles. • Important Notes • Important Notes • The above job description is not intended as, nor should it be construed as, exhaustive of all duties, responsibilities, skills, efforts, or working conditions associated with this job. The job description may change or be supplemented at any time in accordance with business needs and conditions. • Some roles may also require legal eligibility to work in a firearms environment. • We collect personal information from applicants to evaluate candidates for employment. You may request access, deletion, or exercise other CCPA rights at [email protected] or via our Axon Privacy Web Form. For more information, please see the Your California Privacy Rights section of our Applicant and Candidate Privacy Notice. • [email protected] • Axon’s mission is to Protect Life and is committed to the well-being and safety of its employees as well as Axon’s impact on the environment. All Axon employees must be aware of and committed to the appropriate environmental, health, and safety regulations, policies, and procedures. Axon employees are empowered to report safety concerns as they arise and activities potentially impacting the environment.