Director, Bid Management in Bedford

Location: EMEA (Flexible / Hybrid)

Reports To: VP Commercial Ops EMEA

Direct Reports: 5-8 (Senior Bid Managers, Bid Coordinators, Content/Knowledge Manager)

Grade: Director Level

Purpose of the Role

Lead the transformation of EMEA Bid Management from a fragmented, KAM-dependent function into a centralized, disciplined Command Center that drives measurable improvements in win rates, resource allocation, and governance for large-scale critical infrastructure projects (>$10M). Own the end-to-end bid lifecycle — from Go/No-Go qualification through proposal submission and mobilization handover — ensuring Vertiv competes only on winnable opportunities with the right resources, at the right time, and transitions seamlessly into execution.

Key Responsibilities

• Strategy, Governance & Decision Framework
• Bid/No-Bid methodology: Own and enforce the Go/No-Go Evaluation Tool (T0 Gate) and Bid/No-Bid Scoring Mechanism (T1 Gate) to filter opportunities with rigor and consistency.
• SteerCo governance: Establish and chair the SteerCo governance process for large projects (>$10M), ensuring President, VP Sales, VP Ops, and CFO have clear, structured decision inputs at every gate.
• Hard Gates enforcement: Define and enforce Hard Gates — including insufficient time, critical unmitigated risk, legal/compliance issues, and margin floor breaches — to protect Vertiv from uncommercial commitments.
• Risk and resource discipline: Implement structured decision gates to control risk exposure, prioritize resources across competing bids, and focus pursuit investment on genuinely winnable opportunities.
• Red Team Review process: Drive a rigorous Red Team Review — assembling senior leaders and SMEs not involved in day-to-day bid drafting to challenge and stress-test the winning strategy before submission.
• Bid Storyboard & Winning Narrative
• Storyboard methodology: Own and enforce the Bid Storyboard framework, ensuring every major proposal tells a compelling, customer-centric story rather than a disjointed collection of technical responses.
• Framework design: Define the standard storyboard structure: articulate the customer's problem, Vertiv's unique value proposition, proof points (case studies, references, differentiators), and a clear "why us / why now" narrative.
• Early-cycle development: Ensure the storyboard is developed in the pre-writing phase and serves as the strategic blueprint aligning all contributors around a single, coherent winning theme before any content is drafted.
• Message consistency: Use the storyboard to drive alignment across all proposal volumes — Technical, Commercial, Delivery, and Services — so that every section reinforces the same win themes.
• Red Team integration: Leverage the storyboard in Red Team Reviews as the benchmark for assessing proposal quality: Does the narrative land? Is the differentiation clear? Would the customer choose Vertiv based on this story?
• Template library: Build a library of reusable storyboard templates by customer segment (Hyperscaler, Colo, Enterprise, Sovereign) to accelerate future bids and capture institutional knowledge.
• Cultural shift: Train Bid Managers and contributing SMEs on storyboarding techniques, shifting the culture from answering questions to winning hearts and minds with a differentiated narrative.
• Mobilization Phase & Execution Readiness
• Mobilization ownership: Own the Mobilization Phase as a critical bridge between bid award and project execution — ensuring no project starts without a signed-off, credible mobilization plan that has survived rigorous functional scrutiny.
• Functional sign-off governance: Drive a Functional Sign-Off process requiring each function (Engineering, Operations, Supply Chain, Finance, Legal, Services) to formally sign off on their scope, resource commitment, delivery assumptions, and risk acceptance before mobilization is approved.
• Stress-testing assumptions: Ensure the mobilization plan is validated against actual capacity constraints and supply chain realities — not built on the optimistic assumptions that may have underpinned the bid phase.
• Mobilization Gate: Establish a Mobilization Gate (post-award, pre-execution) where the SteerCo validates that all functional sign-offs are in place, the PM is confirmed, and the plan is credible before committing Vertiv resources to delivery.
• Prevent "winning the bid, losing the project": Validate execution feasibility during the bid phase and lock accountability during mobilization.
• Mobilization KPI: Track the percentage of projects that achieve full functional sign-off within the defined SLA of contract award as a standing governance metric reported to senior leadership.
• Win Rate & Performance Management
• Measurable ROI: Deliver clear, quantified ROI through a defined win-rate improvement target from the current baseline within 12 months, tracked against an agreed performance framework.
• Bid analytics and reporting: Establish comprehensive reporting covering win/loss analysis, bid cost tracking, resource utilization, and cycle time metrics to drive continuous improvement.
• Win/loss reviews: Conduct structured win/loss reviews after every Tier A bid and feed insights back into pursuit strategy, pricing approach, and content library.
• Pipeline health: Track and report on bid pipeline health, conversion rates by customer tier (Hyperscaler / Colo / Enterprise), and margin protection performance on a regular cadence.
• Team Leadership & Capability Building
• Team consolidation: Build and lead the consolidated Bid Management team, including Senior Bid Managers, Bid Coordinators, and a Content/Knowledge Manager, under a single governance model.
• Senior Bid Manager capability: Recruit and develop Senior Bid Managers with deep understanding of the data center lifecycle, TCO modelling, and RIBA stages to lead complex pursuits with authority.
• Coordinator efficiency: Ensure Bid Coordinators own the Content Library and manage high-volume standard RFPs efficiently, freeing Senior Bid Managers for strategic, differentiated work.
• On-call SME model: Establish the SME model: one Technical Architect pre-approved per BU to dedicate 20% of their week to bid support, providing consistent expert input without overloading delivery functions.
• Supply Chain and Ops integration: Coordinate Supply Chain and Ops on-call resources to provide accurate lead times and procurement constraint data during the bid phase, preventing commercial commitments that cannot be met.
• Tech Stack & Process Excellence
• Technology ecosystem: Own the bid technology ecosystem, including CRM integration, proposal automation tools, and the content management platform, ensuring all tools are fit for purpose and actively used.
• Single Source of Truth: Build and maintain the content library — spanning case studies, certifications, ESG data, and compliance matrices — as the definitive, version-controlled resource for all bid contributors.
• VCORE and RIBA alignment: Align bid stages to Vertiv's VCORE sales process and RIBA Plan of Work stages (0-6), ensuring the bid function operates in lockstep with the broader commercial and project lifecycle.
• CRM integration: Ensure seamless integration with Oracle Sales Cloud (OSC) stages — Identifying, Qualifying, Developing, Proposing, Negotiating, Closing — so pipeline data and bid status are always synchronized.
• Cross-Functional Orchestration
• Command Center function: Act as the Command Center that translates KAM "desires" into actionable engineering and financial requirements, preventing scope ambiguity from entering the bid process.
• Multi-BU coordination: Coordinate across all five Business Units (Infrastructure Solutions, Power Management, Thermal Management, ITS, Services) to ensure integrated, coherent responses to complex customer requirements.
• Functional interfaces: Interface with Finance (margin analysis), Legal (risk review), Operations (capacity and lead times), and Procurement to ensure all commercial commitments are grounded in operational reality.
• RACI discipline: Ensure the RACI is respected: Bid Management is Responsible for Bid/No-Bid Qualification, Pricing and Margin Analysis, Proposal Writing, Red Teaming, and Final Review on all Tier A and Tier B pursuits.

Must-Have Qualifications

• 10+ years experience in bid/proposal management, with at least 5 years in a leadership role managing complex, multi-stakeholder pursuits.
• Critical infrastructure expertise: Direct industry experience in data centers, power systems, thermal management, or mission-critical facilities is essential.
• Proven win-rate improvement: Demonstrated track record of improving win rates on complex, multi-million-dollar bids (>$10M) through methodology, governance, and team capability.
• Hyperscaler and colo experience: Experience managing bids for hyperscalers, large colocation providers, or sovereign/government projects with complex technical and commercial requirements.
• TCO mastery: Deep understanding of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) models and lifecycle value propositions as a commercial differentiator in long-cycle infrastructure bids.
• Stage-gate governance: Experience implementing Go/No-Go and Bid/No-Bid frameworks with executive steering committees, including Hard Gate disciplines and risk-based filtering.
• Commercial acumen: Strong commercial capability: margin protection, penalty clause risk assessment, value engineering, and the ability to make and defend commercial recommendations at VP and CFO level.
• RIBA or equivalent: Experience with RIBA Plan of Work or equivalent construction/project lifecycle frameworks as the basis for aligning bid stages to customer procurement timelines.
• Mobilization governance: Proven ability to design and enforce mobilization and handover governance between sales and delivery functions, including functional sign-off processes and credible mobilization plan standards.
• Bid storyboarding: Demonstrated expertise in bid storyboarding — crafting compelling win narratives that differentiate Vertiv beyond price and align all contributors to a single strategic message.
• Language: Fluent English required; additional European languages are a strong advantage in an EMEA-wide role.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in a multi-BU, matrixed organization where bid responses require cross-functional technical input from multiple business lines.
• Familiarity with APMP (Association of Proposal Management Professionals) best practices or professional certification.
• Experience deploying proposal automation tools and CRM-integrated bid management platforms at scale.
• Background in managing Red Team / Pink Team / Gold Team review processes as a structured quality assurance mechanism.
• Understanding of data center power and cooling topologies, rack density trends, and liquid cooling technologies relevant to AI-driven infrastructure.
• Experience with NeoCloud, AI factory, or GPU-intensive infrastructure bid environments where performance density and power requirements create unique commercial complexity.
• Knowledge of ESG and sustainability requirements in data center procurement, including ISO 14001, energy efficiency metrics, and carbon reporting.

About The Team

Equal Opportunity Employer. We promote equal opportunities for all with respect to hiring, terms of employment, mobility, training, compensation, and occupational health, without discrimination as to age, race, color, religion, creed, sex, pregnancy status (including childbirth, breastfeeding, or related medical conditions), marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity / expression (including transgender status or sexual stereotypes), genetic information, citizenship status, national origin, protected veteran status, political affiliation, or disability.