Work Winning Lead - Water in Birmingham

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

Start here. Grow here. We are seeking a Work Winning Lead for our Water business. In this pivotal role, you will shape and drive all work-winning activities and be accountable for building a robust, business-critical pipeline. You will lead a high-performing team of six professionals (from Bid Coordinators to Associate Bid Directors) and provide strategic oversight and support for major pursuits, typically ranging from $5M to $35M+ in contract value. Reporting to the Strategy & Growth Director for Water and working closely with the Water leadership team, you will directly influence revenue growth, profitability, and long-term market positioning.

This is a high-visibility role partnering with senior leaders, Client Account Managers, Capture Managers, Marketing, and Delivery Teams to challenge conventional thinking and deliver data-driven insights that inform business decisions. You will champion best practices, foster continuous improvement, and elevate work-winning standards across AECOM Water.

Here's what you'll do:

• Team leadership and development: Lead and manage a high-performing team of work-winning professionals, ensuring accountability for team projects and outcomes. Attract, retain, and nurture top talent through effective recruitment, onboarding, and succession planning, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and excellence. Inspire and motivate the team to achieve ambitious goals, promoting a culture of inclusion, accountability, and innovation.
• Strategic bid pipeline: Own and shape a multi-year pipeline of strategically important opportunities. Monitor budgets, ROI, capture rates and other metrics identifying areas for programme-level improvement. Lead rigorous prioritisation of Enterprise Critical Pursuits, Tier 2, and Tier 3 bids, managing work winning resources and proactively resolving risks or blockers. Drive CRM (Salesforce) discipline to enable executive decision making and performance reporting.
• Quality & Governance: Where required on our largest and most strategic pursuits, lead bid reviews, facilitate workshops and constructively challenge client value propositions. Leverage professional experience and data-driven insights to influence critical bid/no-bid decisions, ensuring optimal win rates and safeguarding return on investment. Oversee quality and governance, embedding best practice processes and tools to maintain excellence in bid delivery. Anticipate and escalate material risks to secure swift decisions that maintain our competitive advantage.
• Senior stakeholder engagement and reporting: Build trusted relationships with senior business leaders, aligning pursuit strategies with business priorities. Constructively challenge and influence senior leaders, Client Account Managers, Capture Managers using experience and insight to advocate for work winning best practices. Deliver compelling reports and actionable insights that inform business planning and strategy. Lead cross-functional projects aligned with business growth and work winning transformation.
• Bidding best practice and continuous improvement: Embed best-practice methods, tools, and training across capture and bid delivery; standardise how we qualify, plan, and execute. Own the quality of bid collateral, playbooks, and reusable assets; ensure every major pursuit is proposition-led and client-outcome focused. Drive continuous improvement and innovation in bidding approaches, overseeing win/loss lessons learned outputs ensuring they are turned into measurable improvements.

Qualifications

Ready to push the limits of what’s possible? Here’s what we’re looking for:

• Accountable leadership: Proven track record leading a bid/work winning function in the infrastructure, engineering or built environment, with clear accountability for outcomes.
• Team development: Demonstrated experience inspiring, developing, and line managing high-performing teams.
• Strategic mindset: Experience translating high-level business goals into effective, actionable work-winning plans and ensuring team focus on strategic outcomes.
• Stakeholder influence: Exceptional people skills, with experience building trust and confidently challenging and influencing senior stakeholders to shape key decisions.
• Bid expertise: Extensive understanding of work winning methodologies and experience leading and supporting major bids and proposals in a complex, multidisciplinary environment.
• Analytical skills: Advanced analytical skills, adept at distilling complex multifaceted data into clear and concise business insights to shape work winning direction.
• Resilience & organisation: Decisive, organised, and resilient - able to lead through complexity and deliver results.

Qualifications: Degree-level qualification (preferred); APMP Professional certification (desirable). Water sector knowledge and experience (desirable).

Additional Information

We celebrate diversity, including neurodiversity, and believe it enriches our team. We welcome applications from all backgrounds and abilities. If you are an applicant with a disability that requires reasonable accommodation to complete the application process, please contact us at [email protected]. At AECOM, we value everyone's unique contributions and perspectives.

If you meet some of the requirements above or have transferable skills you believe would benefit us, we would be delighted to hear from you!

Interested in the role or curious about life at AECOM? Follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube to explore our AECOM voices, employee stories, latest projects, and much more!

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. Please let us know using this email address [email protected] if you would like to apply through the Disability Confident Interview Scheme. All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.