FCDO Senior Bid Manager, Project Acquisition in Oxford

The Project Acquisition team at Oxford Policy Management is currently seeking an FCDO Senior Bid Manager on a full-time, permanent basis. The position will be remote within the UK, within commutable distance to attend regular events in London and Oxford. We are an international development consultancy working to improve lives through sustainable policy change in low- and middle-income countries. Our vision is for fair public policy that benefits both people and the planet.

OPM’s Acquisition team provides support across the project acquisition lifecycle from prepositioning right through to handover at project initiation phase, and in specific cases project implementation through fast-response frameworks. The team is based across 3 international offices on 2 continents, providing strategic and administrative support on bidding, frameworks, and business development through adaptive support, dependent on the project stage, business priority, and donor.

The FCDO Senior Bid Manager works as part of the Acquisition team and with the wider business, driving process improvements in all FCDO bidding and leading our most important FCDO bids, whilst also growing our understanding of the FCDO acquisition environment to inform our FCDO bid strategy. You will work closely with technical, bid and delivery teams to ensure the admission of high-quality, priority bids for FCDO. Coordinating internal and external contributors, analysing client needs, market intelligence, and client feedback, you will develop and assess our FCDO project pipeline and support go/no-go decisions, ensure effective prepositioning activity, lead bid kick-offs and promote continuous improvement in all FCDO bidding activity undertaken by our global, multi-disciplinary teams.

The FCDO Senior Bid Manager also plays a strategically important role in helping to inform the strategy for the work we pursue and win with the FCDO. Leveraging a high-level understanding of FCDO frameworks, procurement routes and market trends, they work closely with our Consulting technical teams, International Office Leadership and other stakeholders to ensure we understand and are positioned to capture opportunities that best align with our technical offer across a range of thematic areas. Representing OPM in external forums, including British Expertise International (BEI), whilst remaining up to date with market moves and competitor intelligence, the position cultivates and grows our understanding of the wider international development acquisition environment in the UK.

As our FCDO Senior Bid Manager you will:

• Business Development: Take ownership for developing and nurturing internal capability on FCDO opportunity identification and award; establishing an in-house centre of excellence for FCDO bidding. Represent OPM at client and market events, increasing our knowledge and networking capacity as an external representative within established and new forums. Become OPM’s go-to person on FCDO’s evolving funding priorities, pipeline of work and competitor developments.
• Bid Management: Support priority FCDO bidding from prepositioning through to contracting by managing bids and coordinating internal and external inputs, ensuring bids are effectively prepositioned and resourced, maintaining high quality and timely delivery. Provide specialist advice and inform bid strategy through analysing client bid documentation and use of bidding knowledge and tools. Advise and support prepositioning activities, input into project go/no-go decisions through providing market analysis and competitor analysis. Facilitate and lead Bid kick-off and planning– ensuring clarity of roles and responsibilities across the bidding team and commitment to timeframes.
• Learning and Knowledge Management: Undertake analysis of client feedback, ensuring a culture of continuous improvement is embedded throughout the business as relates to FCDO relationship management. Coach and mentor junior members of the acquisition team, ensuring adherence to best practice in bidding and acquisition activity for FCDO projects.

Key Qualifications / Experience / Skills / Behaviours:

• Educated to degree level ideally in business administration, international development or another relevant field; or possesses equivalent professional experience gained through hands-on practice.
• Demonstrable experience of crafting and implementing strategic business development/client relationship management/project acquisition strategies with UKHMG ministries, ideally with specific experience of working with FCDO.
• Proven ability to build trusted relationships with senior stakeholders, procurement teams and decision makers in client-facing activities.
• Experience in leading or supporting the end-to-end bidding process, drafting high-quality proposals, tenders, and grant submission, applying knowledge of best practice in managing large and complex projects.
• Demonstrated ability to write winning proposals, with strong knowledge of tendering requirements, legalities, and guidelines for consulting services.
• Comfortable working within a fast-paced environment, adapting to shifting priorities whilst delivering high-quality results to tight deadlines.
• Excellent strategic influencing skills, with the ability to motivate and engage a diverse range of internal and external stakeholders, up to and including senior management level.
• Combines a genuine passion for business development with an interest in international development and professional drive to advance positive social change.
• Strong numerical skills, with the ability to prepare and analyse large budgets, excellent financial and commercial acumen.
• Good working knowledge of CRM platforms and MS Office, ideally with advanced Word, Excel and PowerPoint proficiency.

Our Offer: We enable colleagues’ capacity to grow professionally through enhanced learning resources, opportunities to work cross functionally, and space to engage with a range of internal and external industry events. Our non-hierarchical culture values support, collaboration, intellectual curiosity, and a rich diversity of perspectives. We provide an exceptionally generous annual leave entitlement and a hybrid working model to encourage and enable healthy work/life balance. Wellbeing resources including a global Employee Assistance Programme and access to the UnMind app. Competitive salary and contributory pension scheme. We are strengthened by the diversity of colleagues across our global business and are committed to being an equal opportunities employer, promoting a diverse and inclusive workplace for all. Our recruitment practices reflect our ambition to make the international development sector more inclusive and firm belief that our work delivers the best outcomes when we actively include a diversity of perspectives and experiences.

Application: If you share our vision for fair public policy that benefits both people and planet, we would love to hear from you. We review and interview applicants on a rolling basis and encourage you to apply by way of CV via our careers site at the earliest. We may close this advertisement before the published closing date, should a suitable candidate be identified. Unfortunately, we are unable to provide visa sponsorship for this role and candidates must have a pre-existing right to work in the UK for their application to be considered. Oxford Policy Management is committed to promoting equity, diversity, and inclusion at every level of the business. Should you require adjustments to make the application process more accessible please inform us through completing this form or scan the QR code below.