Senior Proposal Manager

Marathon TS is hiring a Senior Proposal Manager who will own, fully and without ambiguity, the end-to-end development and delivery of compliant, compelling, and winning federal proposals across IT engineering, cybersecurity engineering, AI/ML operations, and cloud platform services. The Senior Proposal Manager drives the process, enforces the standard, and is personally accountable for the quality and competitiveness of every submission that leaves this company.

The ideal candidate is a seasoned federal proposal professional with at least 10 years of hands-on experience managing complex proposals in DoD and civilian agency environments. They bring a commanding presence in review sessions, an exacting editorial eye, and the operational discipline to run multiple concurrent proposals without dropping a single deliverable.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the full proposal lifecycle from pre-RFP shaping and capture integration through final submission and post-submittal activities. You are the single point of accountability.
• Build and enforce proposal schedules, compliance matrices, annotated outlines, and volume-level deliverable plans across technical, management, past performance, and cost volumes.
• Enforce our Shipley-based proposal process adapted to client's size and operating tempo. Continuously improve the process based on lessons learned.
• Develop administrative and management volume content from scratch, including executive summaries, management approaches, staffing and organizational plans, transition plans, quality assurance plans, and resumes.
• Perform substantive editing of technical content authored by engineers and SMEs to ensure clarity, compliance with Sections L/M, and alignment with win themes and discriminators.
• Develop and refine proposal graphics concepts in coordination with graphic designers, ensuring visuals reinforce key messages and evaluation criteria.
• Lead Black Hat sessions, competitive analysis, and win strategy development. Translate competitive intelligence into actionable proposal messaging.
• Drive storyboarding and theme development sessions aligned to customer pain points, evaluation criteria, and client's competitive advantages.
• Translate raw SME input into polished, customer-focused, evaluation-aligned proposal content. Do not wait for perfect inputs, extract what is needed and drive the content forward.
• Maintain and continuously curate the client Proposal Library, including past performance write-ups, key personnel resumes, corporate qualifications, reusable boilerplate, and graphics.
• Build a knowledge management discipline that accelerates proposal starts and reduces rework across pursuits.
• Plan and execute Pink Team, Red Team, Gold Team, and Final Production reviews with structured agendas, evaluation criteria, and feedback mechanisms.
• Verify compliance, responsiveness, and scoring alignment prior to Gold Team and final production.
• Ensure full compliance with solicitation instructions (Sections L/M) and submission requirements across all applicable platforms (SAM.gov, PIEE, agency portals, email submissions).
• Lead development of oral presentation materials, demonstration scripts, and executive briefing packages when required by solicitation.
• Coordinate rehearsals, coaching sessions, and messaging alignment with presenters and executive leadership.

Required Qualifications

• Minimum 10 years of federal proposal management experience in a government contracting environment, with demonstrated success managing and winning IT services proposals.
• Proven experience developing administrative and management volumes from scratch (executive summaries, management plans, staffing plans, transition approaches, QA plans).
• Expert-level writing, substantive editing, and document production skills. Ability to take rough SME input and produce polished, evaluation-ready content under pressure.
• Deep familiarity with FAR/DFARS-based procurements, evaluation structures, and federal acquisition processes.
• Demonstrated experience applying the Shipley Method or equivalent structured proposal development process.
• Experience managing proposal efforts in at least two of the following IT domains: enterprise IT engineering and platform operations, cybersecurity engineering, cloud infrastructure or AI/ML.
• Bachelor's degree required (Master's degree in English, Communications, Business, or a related field preferred).

Preferred Qualifications

• Direct experience supporting proposals for DoD agencies and Client components.
• Familiarity with compliance frameworks as they relate to proposal content: CMMC, NIST 800-53, NIST 800-171, FedRAMP, DoD 8140.
• Experience with AI/ML-related proposal content, including operational AI platforms, responsible AI frameworks, and emerging technologies such as Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, etc.
• Working knowledge of GovWin, SAM.gov, FPDS, USA Spending, and other federal market intelligence tools.
• Experience with proposal collaboration and production tools (SharePoint, Microsoft 365, Teams, Adobe InDesign or Illustrator for graphics coordination).
• APMP certification (Practitioner or Professional) or equivalent.