Bids Specialist

The Bid Specialist is central to our client’s growth, responsible for shaping persuasive, end to end high-quality bid submissions that secure complex consultancy work across government and industry. Our client operates within the consultancy sector, delivering on their strategic transformation outcomes across the public and private sectors, unlocking complexity to create meaningful and lasting impact.

We are looking for someone with a passion for managing, writing, and editing compelling bid responses. You will be working in a highly regarded and experienced bid team, comprising a Senior Bid Manager and Bid Lead, and in close partnership with the legal, finance, marketing, and knowledge teams. This is a highly visible role, where you will support Directors and Partners to create compliant and compelling tender responses.

As the business continues to rapidly grow, driven by a strong pipeline and a strategic push into international markets, the Bids Team play an increasingly critical role, supporting a growing volume of opportunities with greater complexity, diversity, and strategic impact. With support from the Senior Bid Manager and the Bid Lead, this role will see you:

• Manage our central tenders inbox; working with the Bids team to identify and appraise new business opportunities, then engaging with Partners and Directors to review and qualify.
• Provide end-to-end bid management capability; developing bid plans, overseeing completion of mandatory and compliance aspects, ensuring adherence to internal governance, and liaising with external partners, specialists, and sub-contractors.
• Understand and communicate the exact requirements of all bids (including deadlines, response structures, word counts and presentation styles), to ensure fully compliant responses.
• Assist bid teams to develop win themes, then guide response structures and storyboards that best convey how the business will deliver results.
• Work with consultants at all levels of the business to draft prose, often translating complex information into concise, engaging plain English text.
• Build networks with subject matter experts across the business to translate their knowledge, passion, and experience into solutions for the clients.
• Work with the bid team to oversee the delivery of all bid materials, including technical responses, executive summaries, social value proposals, CVs and case studies.
• Review, proof read and edit drafts for grammatical and style excellence; ensuring the brand and messaging are embedded, consistent and tailored.
• Understand knowledge capture, including security, client preference, and permissions to retrieve and disseminate information to the right people.
• Contribute to the continuous improvement of the bid processes through lessons learned capture, win/loss feedback reviews and AI/Technology adoption.
• Gather market intelligence on prospective clients to understand buying trends and competitor landscapes to help the sector teams shape our propositions; or developing your understanding of public sector procurement and routes to market.

This is an ideal role for a junior bid manager, bid coordinator, copywriter, proposal specialist, bid, or tender writer looking to develop their career in an ambitious, growing organisation. We’ll be looking for similar characteristics in you, including:

• A pleasure to work with.
• Output driven and solutions minded.
• Experience in copywriting, proposal, tender or bid writing and familiar with end-to-end tendering process.
• Excellent interpersonal, communication and influencing skills, with the confidence to build networks across the business, especially with subject matter experts at senior levels.
• Confident in translating technical and complex information into concise, engaging and persuasive written answers.
• Ability to digest, interpret and summarise client requirements, sometimes deciphering ambiguous, complex or contradictory information.
• Creative and flexible, able to adapt your style based on both the needs of our prospective clients and the demands of our business.
• Organised and thorough in meeting requests and deadlines, with excellent time management; able to work on multiple deadlines simultaneously within a fast-paced team, sometimes in pressurised situations.
• Keen eye for detail with a relentless focus on delivering high-quality work; skilled in maintaining style and language, and a comprehensive proof reader.
• An interest in how the use of AI tools could be used to enhance bid processes; some experience of hands-on experimentation with AI tools in any setting is an advantage.

This role is based at the Head Office in Oxfordshire, with a minimum one day per week in the office and occasional travel for in-person bid working and company events.