Work Winning Lead - Water in Exeter

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.

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).

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!