What are the responsibilities and job description for the EPC Freight Forwarding Pricing Specialist position at Altius Talent | Freight Forwarding Recruitment?
ABOUT
Our client is a Swiss-founded project freight forwarder, established in Basel in 1971, with 24 offices worldwide and one specialism: EPC and energy project freight. The chartering desk and the transport engineering team are in-house, which matters more on a pricing desk than anywhere else in the building. Every rate that goes into a bid can be checked against people who fix and move the cargo themselves.
The Houston office opened on the Energy Corridor in 2010 and runs 45 staff across project operations, chartering and transport engineering. Clients are EPC contractors, OEMs and energy developers, with an average client tenure of 11 years.
Until now, tender pricing has been carried by the PM group between milestone deadlines, and the bid calendar for the 2027 and 2028 Gulf Coast scopes no longer allows it. This seat centralises pricing into one desk before bid season opens. The timing is deliberate: the ITBs land in the next two quarters, and the company wants the cost models built before they do.
CORE RESPONSIBILITIES
- You will build tender pricing for EPC project scopes: ITB and RFQ responses, bid tabs and cost models across breakbulk, OOG, heavy lift and containerised freight.
- You will collect and negotiate rates across the whole move: breakbulk and liner tonnage, part and full charter indications through the chartering desk, flat rack and open top space, barge legs, heavy haul, cranage and marshalling yards.
- You will price in revenue tons, W/M and lump sum terms and know when each one protects the file and when it exposes it.
- You will manage rate validity, bunker and currency escalation clauses, and commercial qualifications so a won bid is still a profitable one at execution.
- You will build FEED-stage freight budgets with the PM group before scopes go to bid.
- You will maintain the rate library and tariffs in CargoWise so the desk quotes from live data, not last year's file.
- You will run lost-bid analysis and win-rate reporting and feed both back to the sales desk.
- You will support bid clarification rounds alongside sales and the PM group.
- You will track breakbulk and heavy lift vessel capacity and market rate movements so the desk prices with conviction.
WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR
- You have at least three years in freight forwarding pricing or operations with genuine project cargo exposure, on the forwarder or NVOCC side.
- You can read a vessel spec and a stowage plan well enough to challenge a carrier's number.
- You understand chartering basics and can see where laycan, load and discharge terms and demurrage exposure sit inside a bid.
- Your Excel modelling holds up under a bid tab, and you have worked in CargoWise One or a comparable TMS.
- You know your incoterms and how DAP and DDP scopes change what belongs in the price.
- You hold detail under deadline, because tender deadlines do not move.
- You are Houston based or willing to relocate.
WHAT'S ON OFFER
- Annual bonus linked to bid win rate and file profitability.
- Medical, dental and vision cover, 401(k) with company match, and PTO.
- A pricing desk that sits in the same room as chartering and transport engineering, not on the end of an email chain.
- A clear route into tender management or commercial leadership as the desk grows.
Confidential Search | Placed by Altius Talent
Send your CV to lewis.wilson@wearealtius.com or message directly on LinkedIn. All applications handled in strict confidence.