Capture Management Director - Major Pursuits in Birmingham

Company Description

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.

Job Description

Position Summary

The Capture Director is a pivotal leadership role responsible for driving strategic growth and securing major enterprise-level critical pursuits (ECP / Tier 2). This position requires visionary leadership, strategic thinking, and the ability to lead capture & positioning strategies. Reporting to Head of External Sales, 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. The role offers flexibility, with remote/virtual work options and travel as required.

Key Responsibilities:

• Strategic Leadership: Lead enterprise critical pursuits (ECP / Tier 2) as the Capture Director formulating clear and compelling winning capture and client positioning strategies. Collaborate with global and regional leaders to develop and execute growth plans aligned with AECOM's strategic priorities. 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.
• Business Development: Drive 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 bid, marketing, technical, operations and commercial teams to prepare Capture Plans for complex proposals. Help to build and maintain a diversified pipeline of qualified opportunities, ensuring alignment with business goals. Use data-led client, pipeline and performance intelligence to focus on capture activities which add the most value and return on investment. Establish and nurture client relationships, identifying needs and delivering tailored solutions. Position AECOM's innovative solutions, including ESG, digitalisation, and equity-focused initiatives, to meet client transformation agendas. Partner with the Client Account Managers, Market Sector Leaders, and other business line representatives to have the right conversations with the client at the right time, thinking in a client-centric way to leverage Our Client Promise in delivering capture outcomes that align with client expectations.
• Team Collaboration & Mentorship: Drive cultural change in approach to capture, facilitating 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 - coach and train 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 and compelling/persuasive. Ensure partnership between technical, marketing and bidding staff for proposal best practices. Coach and support other team members in building strong relationships within the capture team and train others in AECOM to enhance their capture management skills.
• Operational Excellence: Champion the complete lifecycle of the sales process, ensuring quality assurance and adherence to Green Light Analysis and 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) by influencing their activity focus and prioritising the capture and sales asks from these functions; take the lead in coordinating strategy development with these functions on enterprise critical 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.
• Innovation & Impact: Align AECOM's initiatives with client priorities, focusing on sustainability, resilience, and cutting-edge solutions. Leverage AECOM's Think & Act Global expertise and enterprise capabilities to deliver value-driven, client-focused outcomes. Harness potential of key growth enablers such as digital and technological innovations, including AI and autonomy, to provide competitive advantage in a rapidly changing world.
• Influence & Relationship Management: Build trust with client decision-makers, delivery partners and internal stakeholders, including Client Account Managers, Market Sector Leaders, Regional Business Line Leaders, and Executive Boards. 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.

Qualifications:

• Experience in critical 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 clients' needs.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Degree level relevant qualification (preferable).
• Member of recognised professional body and/or professional qualifications relative to core markets.
• Sector experience across our key growth markets to include: Aviation, Energy, Water, Defence, Data Centres would be highly advantageous.

What We Offer:

At AECOM, we provide the flexibility to work in hybrid environments, competitive pay, and comprehensive benefits tailored to support you and your family. We champion career growth through award-winning training programs and diverse opportunities. As an Equal Opportunity Employer, we believe in your potential and are committed to helping you achieve your career ambitions.

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.

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 unrivalled technical and digital expertise, a culture of equity, diversity and inclusion, and a commitment to environmental, social and governance priorities.

AECOM provides a wide array of compensation, benefits and well-being programs to meet the diverse needs of our employees and their families. 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.