Principal Bid Lead - Defence

at  Serco Plc

Principal Bid Lead – Defence
Home Based (with UK travel)
Full Time, Permanent
£75,000+ per annum plus benefits (depending on experience)
Company Car + Bonus
Here at Serco, we are seeking a Principal Bid Lead to join our Growth team with proven experience of Capture and Bids of significant complexity and scale, with specific focus on bidding and winning work with Public Sector bodies. You will take on a key role in driving our success within the Defence sector. This is a fantastic opportunity to lead on large, complex bids and play a pivotal part in shaping the future of Serco’s Defence services – a significant growth area for the business.
We’re looking for a proactive and innovative individual with the ability to develop and sell tailored solutions and consistently deliver results. You will possess both capture and bid management leadership skills, as well as recognising the importance of creating and sustaining bid teams within the capability and capacity to produce winning results.
Serco’s purpose is to impact a better future - we bring together the right people, the right technology, and the right partners to create innovative solutions that deliver positive impact and address some of the most urgent and complex challenges facing governments globally. Our services are powered by more than 50,000 colleagues working across multiple sectors including defence, space, migration, justice, healthcare, transport, and customer services in four regions: UK & Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East.
As part of this you’ll: Bid Leadership: Manage end-to-end bid processes on high-value, complex opportunities, from pre-qualification through to post-submission, ensuring delivery of compelling, winning bids that align with Serco’s strategic goals. Capture Strategy: Develop and execute comprehensive capture plans, integrating insights and customer intelligence to maximise win probabilities. Collaboration: Work closely with Business Development, Operational Teams, and other stakeholders to ensure seamless capture and bid execution and effective use of Serco’s capabilities. Customer Engagement: Lead key customer interactions, including presentations, negotiations, and stakeholder management, ensuring the voice of the customer is embedded throughout the bid lifecycle. Team Leadership: Build, mentor, and sustain high-performing bid teams, fostering a collaborative and innovative environment that drives success.
What you’ll need to do the role: Proven success in winning highly complex, large, competitively tendered Defence bids. Experience in structured methodologies such as APMP, Prince2, Shipley, Miller Heiman would be advantageous. Ability to assess capture performance to measure effectiveness, anticipate and resolve problems. Strong commercial and financial understanding to enable optimum balance of risk, reward, and price to embed within qualified opportunities. High performance, goal-orientated, and creative problem-solving skills. Ability to operate successfully in a challenging, changeable, and high-profile role, within a volatile and dynamic market environment. Proficiency in bidding methodologies, and ability to flex and adapt to ensure excellence of execution over tick box compliance. Excellent verbal and written communication skills – active listening, ability to articulate customers’ environment and needs to all management levels. Demonstrate ability to self-motivate and self-manage whilst providing leadership to a diverse team.

Please refer the Job description for details