Junior Bid Manager in Leeds

Hippo is seeking an ambitious and detail-oriented Junior Bid Manager to join its successful and highly regarded Bids team. The Junior Bid Manager will be responsible for managing and delivering a range of high-quality bids and proposals at various stages of procurement, sometimes working on multiple concurrently or supporting other team members on larger more complex opportunities. A key focus will be the disciplined execution of the bid process, ensuring compliance, coordinating cross-functional inputs, and creating compelling proposals that secure new business and align with overall company objectives. The Junior Bid Manager is a growth role specialising in complex content review, quality assurance, and project execution support. Hippo will support you to achieve proficiency in a specific bid domain (e.g., technical writing, a specific product line) and to meet your responsibilities ensuring the quality and strategic alignment of specific proposal sections. This role is key in managing smaller bid teams, and facilitating the flow of essential documentation and information.

Key Responsibilities

• Bid Process, Governance, and Management: Applies quality assurance processes (e.g., Pink/Red Team reviews) and proactively monitors the bid schedule to identify and mitigate potential delays; motivates and directs a small, dedicated team to meet deadlines.
• Developing the Strategy (Qualification & Support): Contributes to strategy sessions by presenting data on past win themes and competitive findings; actively challenges basic assumptions about the client's explicit needs to refine the strategic approach.
• Writing to Win (Review & Editorial): Drafts basic content using boilerplate and acts as the primary editor for a specific content section (e.g., technical or management), reviewing complex content for clarity, tone, and strategic alignment, and focusing specifically on flow and readability.
• Bidding Efficiently (Tools, Content, & Library): Leads the definition and maintenance of specialised, domain-specific content sections within the library, and provides coaching to SMEs and peers on using standard templates and tools efficiently.
• Learning and Development: Leads the official post-bid review meeting for medium-complexity bids, focusing on actionable lessons learned, and develops and delivers focused training on a specific bid topic (e.g., content flow) to peers.
• Opportunity Administration: Oversees portal management, ensuring timely distribution of all client communications and amendments to the bid team, and takes ownership of non-content administrative tasks (e.g., supplier forms, references).

Skills & Knowledge

• Content Specialisation: Proficiency in editing, reviewing, and restructuring complex technical or commercial content.
• Process Application: Ideally a working knowledge of bid methodologies and quality assurance processes (e.g., review gates).
• Leadership Foundation: Emerging ability to motivate, organise, and direct a small team of contributors (SMEs/Writers).
• Data Analysis: Ability to compile, interpret, and present bid data (e.g., win themes, competitor findings) to support strategy development.
• Tool Proficiency: High proficiency in Google Workspace (Mail, Drive, Docs, etc) and Microsoft Office Suite (Word, Excel). Ideally experienced with Hubspot CRM tooling.

Experience

• Required: Relevant experience in a Bid Coordinator or Bid Support role, demonstrating consistent progress in proposal creation.
• Required: Proven experience in editing and reviewing complex, multi-contributor documents.
• Preferred: Relevant professional certification (e.g., APMP Foundation) or specialisation training (e.g., advanced technical writing).
• Preferred: Experience facilitating small team meetings or leading focused training sessions.

What makes us great

• Contributory pension scheme (Hippo 6% with employee contributions of 2%)
• 25 days holiday plus UK public holidays
• Perkbox access for a wide range of discounts
• Critical illness cover
• Life assurance and death in service cover
• Volunteer days
• Cycle-to-work scheme for the avid cyclists
• Salary sacrifice electric vehicles scheme
• Season ticket loans
• Financial and general wellbeing sessions
• Flexible benefits scheme with options of: private health cover, private dental cover, additional company pension contributions, additional holidays (up to an extra 2 days), wellbeing contribution, charity contributions, tree planting

Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at Hippo

At Hippo, we’re dedicated to creating a diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace that works for everyone. We understand that having a diverse team unlocks our capacity for innovation, creativity and problem solving. Only by building a community of diverse perspectives, cultures and socio-economic backgrounds can we create an environment where all can contribute and thrive. We actively encourage applications from underrepresented groups including women, ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+, neurodivergent and people with disabilities. We are committed to providing an inclusive and accessible recruitment process that reflects our workplace culture. We are a registered Disability Confident Employer, Mindful Employer, Endometriosis Friendly Employer and a member of the Armed Forces Covenant. Hippo continually strives to remove barriers, provide accommodations and offer reasonable adjustments to ensure equity throughout our practices.

Hippo locations

We are headquartered in Leeds and have offices across the UK in Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham, London and Bristol. We’re on the lookout for top talent nationwide but you need to be located within reasonable travelling distance from one of our offices which will be your contracted office location. Given the dynamic nature of a consulting business, you may be required to work on-site at a Hippo office or at an in/out of town client location for a number of days per week (client dependent) and therefore candidates will need to be open/flexible to travel. Plus, we offer a generous relocation support package of up to £8k (please ask for terms and conditions) to help make your move a smooth one.