Strategic Capture Leader — Transportation Growth in London

Primary Location: UK - Manchester, Level 4 - 100 Emban

Company Description

Work with Us. Change the World. At AECOM, we're delivering a better world. Whether improving your commute, keeping the lights on, providing access to clean water, or transforming skylines, our work helps people and communities thrive. We are the world's trusted infrastructure consulting firm, partnering with clients to solve the world’s most complex challenges and build legacies for future generations. There has never been a better time to be at AECOM. With accelerating infrastructure investment worldwide, our services are in great demand. We invite you to bring your bold ideas and big dreams and become part of a global team of over 50,000 planners, designers, engineers, scientists, digital innovators, program and construction managers and other professionals delivering projects that create a positive and tangible impact around the world. We're one global team driven by our common purpose to deliver a better world. Join us.

Job Description

The Senior Capture Manager is a key leadership role responsible for driving strategic growth in the Transportation business through securing major pursuits ($20-$100M). This position requires leadership, strategic thinking, and the ability to lead capture and positioning strategies. Reporting to the Strategy & Growth Director for Transportation, the role involves developing and implementing winning capture and client positioning strategies, fostering collaboration across global and regional business lines, and ensuring operational excellence throughout the pursuit lifecycle. This is a hybrid role with travel as required.

Key Responsibilities:

• Capture Leadership & Impact
• Lead enterprise critical pursuits ($20-$100M) as the Capture Director formulating clear and compelling winning capture and client positioning strategies.
• Drive integrated strategies to improve capture and win rates and secure transformative programs.
• Analyse competitive landscapes, leveraging insights from recent wins and losses to refine strategies.
• Build trust with client decision-makers, delivery partners and internal stakeholders, including Client Account Managers, Market Sector Leaders, and Regional Business Line Leaders.
• Innovative thinker, problem solver and willing to challenge teams to stretch beyond the norm.
• Demonstrate resilience and adaptability, ensuring focus remains on those opportunities which will deliver growth ambitions and provide greater value to our clients.
• Business Development
• Drives growth through the ability to position for and capture key opportunities including both new business opportunities and the renewal / extension of existing opportunities within key accounts.
• Lead a holistic approach to capture strategy development, including client listening, win strategy creation, solution development, marcomms planning, answer planning, review through to debrief and lessons learnt.
• Partner with proposal, marketing, technical, operations and commercial teams to prepare Capture Plans for complex proposals.
• Partner with Client Account Managers and business leaders to nurture client relationships, identifying needs and delivering tailored solutions.
• Develop opportunity pipelines based on client intelligence.
• Position AECOM’s innovative solutions, including ESG, digitalisation, and equity-focused initiatives, to meet client transformation agendas.
• Drive cultural change in approach to capture, supporting the adoption of AECOM’s positioning and pursuit playbooks and roll out of supportive training across the region.
• Support the growth in strategic capture capability enabling teams to become self-reliant – supporting the coaching and training of regional capture and work-winning teams, including CAMs, capture, bidding and Marcomms professionals.
• Facilitate pursuit strategy meetings and provide guidance and coaching for client engagement/positioning, presentation and interview teams.
• Promote a collaborative approach, leveraging multidisciplinary teams from across the region and globe to achieve success.
• Guide technical writers to develop dynamic and compelling content (all channels not just RFP), that is both compliant, compelling and persuasive.
• Ensure partnership between technical, marketing and proposal staff for proposal best practices.
• Operational Excellence
• Champion the complete lifecycle of the sales process, ensuring quality assurance and adherence to Go/No-Go rigor.
• Maximise the value from growth enabler functions (e.g. Major Pursuits Team, Client Listening, Digital AECOM, AI, Strategic Marcomms and HR); take the lead in coordinating strategy development with these functions on your major pursuits identified for their support.
• Coordinate with strategic marketing to plan and execute effective pursuit-based positioning campaigns that supports client positioning/engagement and elevated brand awareness.
• Ensure compliance with commercial, financial, legal, and governance elements of opportunities and contracts.
• Drive accountability for delivering sales metrics and achieving high capture/win rates.

Qualifications

• Experience in significant pursuit capture strategy development and alignment with business targets and growth strategy, recognised as an industry expert.
• Proven track record of successfully leading strategic and complex pursuit strategies (NSR > £20m) across multi-disciplinary and multi-locational teams, including working alongside clients, delivery partners and supply chain.
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate at all organisational levels – strong leadership skills with experience of managing large and diverse pursuit/capture teams.
• Expert communicator - experienced in facilitating collaborative workshops with diverse teams, ensuring an inclusive approach to stakeholder engagement.
• Experience must demonstrate sales production metrics, demonstrated skills in business development strategy, team leadership, client discovery and development of compelling value propositions that meet client’s needs.

Additional Information

At AECOM, we are committed to maintaining a secure and trustworthy recruitment process and take any fraudulent hiring activity seriously. To support this commitment, all newly hired employees are required to attend an in-person Day 1 onboarding at an AECOM office location as a condition of employment.

About AECOM

AECOM is the world’s trusted infrastructure consulting firm, delivering professional services throughout the project lifecycle – from advisory, planning, design and engineering to program and construction management. On projects spanning transportation, buildings, water, new energy and the environment, our public- and private-sector clients trust us to solve their most complex challenges. Our teams are driven by a common purpose to deliver a better world through our unrivaled technical and digital expertise, a culture of equity, diversity and inclusion, and a commitment to environmental, social and governance priorities.

AECOM is a Fortune 500 firm and its Professional Services business had revenue of $16.1 billion in fiscal year 2025. See how we are delivering sustainable legacies for generations to come at aecom.com and @AECOM.

Freedom to Grow in a World of Opportunity

You will have the flexibility you need to do your best work with hybrid work options. Whether you’re working from an AECOM office, remote location or at a client site, you will be working in a dynamic environment where your integrity, entrepreneurial spirit and pioneering mindset are championed. You will help us foster a safe and respectful workplace, where we invite everyone to bring their whole selves to work using their unique talents, backgrounds and expertise to create transformational outcomes for our clients. AECOM provides a wide array of compensation, benefits and well-being programs to meet the diverse needs of our employees and their families. We’re the world’s trusted global infrastructure firm, and we’re in this together – your growth and success are ours too. Join us, and you’ll get all the benefits of being a part of a global, publicly traded firm – access to industry-leading technology and thinking and transformational work with big impact and work flexibility.

As an Equal Opportunity Employer, we believe in each person’s potential, and we’ll help you reach yours. We are a Disability Confident Employer and will offer an interview to applicants who have a disability or long-term condition, who meet the minimum/essential criteria for the role.