[Hiring] Bid Manager @Cambridge Spark

Role Description

We're looking for an experienced Bid Manager to lead our bidding end to end — public sector and apprenticeship tenders, frameworks and DPS call-offs, and commercial proposals to some of the largest organisations in the country. You'll draft and prepare the responses, working with the Sales Enablement Director on approach and positioning before drafting starts, and on review before anything goes out.

Much of the job is project management, with a bid coordinator reporting to you:

• Setting the bid plan and the dates contributors who don't report to you work to.
• Managing senior stakeholders on both sides — buyers and their evaluators, and our own directors through the approval gates.

The rest is building what we bid with:

• A response library that gets sharper with every submission.
• AI workflows for scoping, drafting and review that live in our systems.

You'll also own how the function is resourced against what's coming:

• What each opportunity will take.
• What we can carry at once.
• What we need in order to bid well rather than thinly.

We're building the function now, so you'll have real influence over how it works and over how we present ourselves to the organisations we most want to win.

Qualifications

• A track record of winning complex, high-value B2B bids — both structured tenders and proposals written from scratch.
• Demonstrable bid project management: several live bids at once, to deadline, coordinating contributors you have no line authority over.
• Credible with senior people on both sides — able to hold a director to a date, form a view on what a buyer really wants and defend it, and stand in front of an evaluation panel.
• Sets the standard for client-ready designed material, and produces it themselves for bespoke proposals where no template exists.
• Working knowledge of UK public sector procurement — ITTs, frameworks, DPS and portals.
• Uses AI as a working method rather than an occasional shortcut, with the discipline to check everything that comes out of it.

Requirements

• Experience leading or developing bid staff, and of building process and governance where it didn't previously exist.
• Able to position a response against named competitors — understanding what the alternative looks like to that buyer, not just describing what we do.
• Experience in learning, skills, apprenticeships, professional services or technology sold into large enterprises.
• Experience of capacity planning across a bid pipeline.
• APMP certification, or experience of bid tooling (Loopio, Bid Hive, AutogenAI) or the equivalent built from general-purpose tools.

Benefits

• Pension with 4% matched contributions, opportunity to opt into salary sacrifice scheme.
• 25 days holiday + Flexi bank holidays + 1 day off on your birthday.
• A day for volunteering.
• Enhanced Maternity and Paternity Leave.
• Health & Wellbeing allowance of up to £30 per month.
• Annual Summer and Xmas events.
• Company socials including everything from Cambridge College formals, pub nights to team building events.
• CPD Allowance alongside quarterly reflections to ring fence time for development and growth.
• Private medical insurance and cash plan.
• Holiday buy back scheme (up to 10 days p/a).
• Employee Assistance Programme with a dedicated company counsellor.