Technical Director, Capture Management Lead - Water in Cambridge

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.

With unprecedented opportunity across the UK and Ireland Water industry, AECOM’s Water business is seeking a Technical Director, Capture Management Lead to join the Water Strategy & Growth team. In this pivotal leadership role, you will be responsible for driving strategic growth and securing major enterprise-level critical pursuits (typically £25m + revenue) in the Water sector. This position requires visionary leadership, strategic thinking, and the ability to lead and take full ownership of capture & positioning strategies.

Key Responsibilities:

• Strategic Leadership & Business Development: Lead and win enterprise critical pursuits (ECP / Tier 2) as the Capture Lead, owning the pursuit strategy from identification through to submission. Direct discovery, pre-positioning, differentiation, and delivery strategies for major transformative programmes including both new business opportunities and the renewal / extension of existing strategic opportunities within key accounts.
• Own pursuit governance, bid budgets, winning pursuit team composition and partnering / supply chain selection.
• Lead a holistic approach to capture strategy development, including client listening, win strategy, solution development, marcomms planning, bid planning & review through to debrief & lessons learnt.
• Establish and nurture client relationships to identify bespoke needs, leveraging proactive engagement to inform and validate solutions.
• Analyse competitive landscapes, leveraging insights from recent wins and losses to refine strategies.
• Help to build and maintain a diversified pipeline of qualified opportunities, ensuring alignment with business strategy and goals.
• Collaborate with global and regional leaders to develop and execute growth plans aligned with AECOM’s strategic priorities.
• Partner with Client Account Managers, Market Sector Leaders, and other business line representatives to leverage Our Client Promise in delivering capture outcomes that align with client expectations.
• Drive cultural change in approach to capture, facilitating the adoption of AECOM’s positioning and pursuit playbooks and roll out of supportive training across Water.

Operational Excellence:

• Drive integrated strategies to improve capture and win rates and secure transformative programs.
• Champion the complete sales lifecycle aligned to best practice, including ensuring quality assurance and adherence to Green Light Analysis and Go/No-Go rigor.
• Coordinate with strategic marketing to plan and execute effective pursuit-based positioning campaigns that support 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.

Influence & Relationship Management:

• Build trust with client decision-makers, delivery partners and internal stakeholders.
• Demonstrate resilience and adaptability, ensuring focus remains on those opportunities which will deliver growth ambitions and provide greater value to our clients.

Enjoy the Perks:

At AECOM, you'll enjoy a range of core and personalised benefits designed to support your future and well-being, customised to fit your lifestyle. We recognise that everyone’s circumstances are different, so we’re more than happy to discuss part-time or flexible working arrangements.

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

• Demonstrated leadership experience of critical pursuit capture strategy development and alignment with business targets and growth strategy within a consultancy environment.
• Proven track record of successfully leading strategic and complex pursuit strategies (Net Service Revenue above £25m) across multi-disciplinary and multi-locational teams.
• Proven ability to deliver sales metrics and develop compelling client-centric value proposition.
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate at all organisational levels – strong leadership skills with experience of building and managing large and diverse pursuit/capture teams.
• Relevant Water Industry experience together with working in a global matrix organisation (preferable).

We celebrate diversity, including neurodiversity, and believe it enriches our team. We welcome applications from all backgrounds and abilities.