Senior Proposal Manager

SLS is seeking an experienced Senior Proposal Manager to lead the development of complex, high-value proposals supporting our Housing Division. This role is responsible for managing the full proposal lifecycle-from opportunity review and kickoff through development, reviews, production, and final submission-while working closely with technical, operational, estimating, contracts, marketing, business development, and executive leadership.

The ideal candidate is a strong proposal practitioner who can independently manage multiple concurrent pursuits, translate solicitation requirements into an executable proposal strategy, drive content development with subject matter experts, and maintain rigorous compliance without requiring day-to-day direction.

This role also requires a strong eye for presentation and document design. Many of SLS's customers expect proposals to reflect a polished, architectural and construction-industry aesthetic, so the successful candidate should be comfortable working with page layout, graphics, formatting, and desktop-publishing tools to create professional, visually cohesive submissions.

The Senior Proposal Manager will also support opportunity research, market intelligence, and pipeline management activities and will be expected to grow into broader proposal leadership responsibilities over time.

Key Responsibilities

Proposal Management

• Independently manage complex proposals from opportunity identification and RFP release through final submission.
• Develop proposal schedules, compliance matrices, outlines, assignments, and review plans.
• Lead kickoff meetings, color team reviews, recovery meetings, and final production activities.
• Coordinate contributors across operations, estimating, contracts, business development, marketing, teaming partners, and executive leadership.
• Maintain accountability for assignments, deadlines, and deliverables throughout the proposal lifecycle.
• Manage multiple active pursuits simultaneously while adjusting priorities as deadlines and business needs change.

Proposal Strategy & Development

• Analyze solicitations to identify evaluation criteria, compliance requirements, risks, customer priorities, and potential differentiators.
• Translate capture strategy and leadership direction into proposal structure, messaging, and content requirements.
• Work with technical and operational SMEs to develop clear, persuasive, responsive proposal content.
• Identify content gaps and proactively determine what information, proof points, personnel, projects, or supporting documentation are needed.
• Develop and refine win themes, discriminators, executive summaries, technical approaches, staffing narratives, management plans, and past-performance content.
• Recommend effective use of graphics, tables, callouts, schedules, and other visual communication techniques.

Desktop Publishing & Visual Quality

• Develop and maintain polished, professional proposal layouts consistent with customer expectations and company branding.
• Apply sound desktop-publishing principles, including page hierarchy, typography, spacing, alignment, visual balance, graphic integration, and document consistency.
• Work within Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Canva, Adobe applications, or similar tools to produce customer-ready proposal materials.
• Collaborate with marketing and graphic-design resources when available while also being capable of independently producing clean, visually compelling documents.
• Maintain a strong quality-control standard for formatting, pagination, tables, graphics, headers/footers, styles, and final production.
• Recognize when a technically compliant document still lacks the polish, clarity, or visual professionalism expected by the customer.

Compliance & Quality

• Maintain proposal compliance throughout development rather than treating compliance as a final-stage review.
• Verify responsiveness to solicitation instructions, evaluation criteria, amendments, page limitations, formatting requirements, and submission instructions.
• Conduct detailed quality-control reviews of proposal documents prior to submission.
• Maintain version control and coordinate final document assembly and production.
• Identify and resolve inconsistencies, errors, gaps, or presentation issues before they reach the customer.

Market Intelligence & Pipeline Support

• Support ongoing identification and evaluation of potential opportunities through GovWin, SAM.gov, agency procurement sites, bid portals, and other market-intelligence sources.
• Review upcoming and active opportunities to assess basic fit, customer requirements, procurement approach, competitive considerations, and relevance to company capabilities.
• Support opportunity tracking and pipeline management activities, including maintaining current opportunity status, key dates, solicitation information, and next actions.
• Assist with early-stage opportunity research and provide information that supports pursuit prioritization and bid/no-bid decisions.
• Help identify emerging opportunities, customer trends, procurement forecasts, recompetes, and related market activity.
• Work with the Proposal Director, business development, and operational leadership to maintain visibility into the pursuit pipeline.
• Develop sufficient understanding of company capabilities, past performance, and target markets to recognize opportunities that warrant further evaluation.

Team Leadership

• Serve as the primary day-to-day proposal lead for assigned pursuits.
• Provide direction and mentoring to proposal coordinators and other junior proposal staff.
• Help contributors understand proposal requirements, deadlines, and expectations.
• Build productive working relationships with technical teams and confidently drive action when information or decisions are needed.
• Support workload planning and assignment of proposal resources.
• Contribute to continuous improvement of proposal processes, tools, templates, content libraries, and training.
• Demonstrate increasing readiness to assume broader responsibility for team leadership, proposal operations, and functional development.

Technology & AI

• Use modern proposal-development tools and AI responsibly to improve efficiency, analysis, content development, quality control, and knowledge reuse.
• Apply sound professional judgment when evaluating AI-generated outputs rather than relying on them without validation.
• Support continued development of repeatable AI-enabled proposal workflows and best practices.

Qualifications

Required

• 7+ years of proposal development experience, including significant responsibility managing competitive proposals.
• Demonstrated ability to independently manage complex, multi-volume proposals with multiple contributors and concurrent deadlines.
• Strong understanding of proposal lifecycle management, compliance, review processes, and persuasive proposal development.
• Excellent writing, editing, organizational, and project-management skills.
• Strong document-formatting and desktop-publishing skills, with demonstrated ability to produce polished, professional customer-facing materials.
• Strong attention to detail and a high standard for document quality, consistency, and presentation.
• Ability to analyze complex solicitation requirements and convert them into actionable proposal plans.
• Strong interpersonal skills and the confidence to work directly with senior leaders, technical SMEs, teaming partners, and cross-functional teams.
• Ability to prioritize effectively and operate in a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment.
• Advanced proficiency with Microsoft Word and PowerPoint.

Preferred

• Experience supporting federal, DoD, state/local government, disaster recovery, construction, engineering, housing, or professional-services procurements.
• Familiarity with FAR-based federal procurements and government proposal requirements.
• Experience with Shipley or APMP proposal methodologies.
• Experience with Canva, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Creative Suite, or other desktop-publishing and graphic-design tools.
• Demonstrated ability to create proposals with a polished architectural, engineering, construction, or professional-services look and feel.
• Experience with GovWin, SAM.gov, agency procurement forecasts, or similar market-intelligence and opportunity-research tools.
• Experience supporting opportunity tracking, pipeline management, capture planning, or CRM-based business-development processes.
• Experience managing proposals involving technical approaches, staffing plans, past performance, project schedules, subcontractors, and cost/price coordination.
• Experience mentoring, supervising, or developing junior proposal professionals.
• Experience using generative AI and other emerging technologies in professional proposal development.

What Success Looks Like

The Senior Proposal Manager can be assigned a major pursuit and independently drive it from early opportunity review through final submission. They anticipate requirements rather than waiting for direction, identify problems early, hold contributors accountable, exercise sound judgment, and elevate issues to the Proposal Director when they require strategic or executive-level decisions.

They produce proposal documents that are not only compliant and persuasive but also polished, visually professional, and appropriate for customers accustomed to high-quality architectural, engineering, construction, and professional-services submissions.

They also contribute to the broader growth process by helping identify and understand opportunities, maintaining awareness of the pursuit pipeline, and supporting early-stage research and planning so opportunity awareness and proposal readiness do not reside with a single individual.