About the role
Bid Manager (Pursuit, Bid and Solutions Manager)
Hybrid – London preferred, flexible for the right candidate who's energised by face-to-face meetings that matter | £65,000 – £75,000
The role has changed. We're not hiring for the old one.
AI has rewritten what a Bid Manager needs to be. The old model, a writer in a room, assembling content to someone else's brief is obsolete. We're looking for someone who leads from the front: shaping win themes, challenging sales strategy, and directing pursuit teams to win, not executing instructions from a Sales Director.
This is the strategic engine behind the sales function, not business development and not template-driven bid writing. You'll lead pursuits averaging £25m–£100m, across the UK and multi-country opportunities. We need gravitas to challenge senior stakeholders, commercial judgment to know what's genuinely deliverable, and the creativity to push our propositions beyond the obvious.
What you'll be doing
* Directing pursuit teams and challenging win themes, not taking a brief, setting one.
* Leading solution design and differentiated propositions on complex, high-value opportunities (£25m–£100m, UK and multi-country).
* Owning sales strategy input for live pursuits, with the authority to push back when a strategy won't win.
* Leading internal discovery and solution workshops, engaging and influencing senior stakeholders.
* Ensuring proposed solutions are both operationally deliverable and commercially viable.
* Leading end-to-end pursuit governance: qualification, planning, reviews and submission readiness.
* Overseeing AI-enabled bid production, continuously refining solutions and submissions to raise speed, clarity and creativity.
* Setting the standard for excellence, then building the talent to sustain it.
What we're looking for
* Proven experience leading and winning complex bids/pursuits, including governance, workplan management and multi-stakeholder orchestration.
* Strategic pursuit leadership and strong solutioning capability.
* Confidence facilitating senior workshops and a track record of influencing senior leaders.
* Strong commercial acumen, you understand the levers of value, risk and delivery feasibility and can manage the finance team to build the correct commercial model.
* Exposure to workforce solutions and/or technology-enabled solutions highly desirable.
* AI-fluent, able to show how it sharpens your judgment and speed.
You'll thrive in this role if you
* Take a solutions-first, customer-outcome mindset.
* Have the gravitas and pace to lead, challenge and drive decisions.
* Pair creative thinking with delivery discipline.
* Have already moved past bid admin into bid leadership.
Vertage is the global brand uniting the former Impellam Group and HeadFirst Group, bringing together a portfolio of specialist talent and workforce solutions companies.
At Vertage, you help reshape the way work gets done. You combine specialised expertise with the power of AI, helping people and organisations move faster, think bigger, and stay ahead in the age of intelligence.
Sound like you? Apply today to join Vertage.