Pursuits and Proposals Senior Manager

Succeed by shaping what matters

We’re BDO, one of the UK’s largest accountancy and business advisory organisations, helping ambitious businesses, their owners and management teams navigate a changing world.

With circa 8,500 people across the UK and Ireland, backed by a global network spanning 169 countries, there’s lots of knowledge, experience and different thinking to draw on here. But what matters is what you bring to it; your ideas, perspectives - the things you care about getting right.

So, here’s where you come in:

The team you’ll join

Our Sales & Marketing team helps us understand our markets, build relationships and communicate what we do.   

You’ll work with different teams and sectors, bringing your ideas to campaigns, insights and engagement across the business. It’s a collaborative environment where you can challenge thinking, take ownership of your work and see how your contribution connects to the bigger picture.  

The role you’ll have

The Pursuit and Proposal Senior Manager is the lead pursuit coach for the firm’s largest and most complex bids, accountable for shaping and executing the overall approach to winning. The role partners with pursuit leads and senior stakeholders to develop win strategy, win themes and differentiation, and to ensure the team’s pitch and presentation approach is compelling, rehearsed and aligned to the written submission.

This role is coaching-led. It drives disciplined pursuit governance (go/no-go inputs, probability-to win thinking, milestone reviews), influences the pursuit team’s behaviours and decisions, and elevates how the firm shows up to buyers. The role may work alongside a proposal manager supporting production but remains accountable for the strategic “win it” approach and for increasing win likelihood on priority pursuits aligned to growth and market priorities.

Key responsibilities

• Shape win strategy, win themes and “how we win” narrative based on buyer needs, decision dynamics and competitive context.
• Challenge and strengthen differentiation, proof points and risk handling, ensuring the case to win is clear and evidenced.
• Coach pursuit leads and senior stakeholders to improve pursuit behaviours, decision-making and quality of execution.
• Facilitate key pursuit working sessions to align teams around the strategy, storyline and roles.
• Lead pitch preparation and rehearsal approach: narrative structure, choreography, speaking roles, audience targeting and QandA readiness.
• Advise on and enforce pursuit milestones and review gates (strategy, storyline, draft quality and readiness checks).
• Identify risks early (strategy, evidence gaps, capability, time) and escalate with recommendations.
• Work with Content/Markets Activation/Design and Bid Hub Knowledge colleagues to ensure proposals and pitches use the best available assets and proof points.
• Contribute to win/loss debriefs and convert learning into improvements in coaching approach, templates and playbooks.
• Provide insight into pursuit pipeline and readiness for reporting and prioritisation.

You'll be someone with

• Significant experience leading high-value, complex bids and pitches in a professional services or complex B2B environment.
• Strong track record of improving win performance through strategy, coaching and disciplined rehearsal.
• Excellent facilitation and senior stakeholder influence skills.
• Strong commercial judgement and ability to assess probability-to-win and readiness.
• High editorial/storytelling capability with strong buyer orientation.

You’ll have people around you to learn from, ask questions and share thoughts with, alongside learning programmes to enhance your skillset and digital platforms to ease your work. All of this helps you succeed in achieving those big (and personal) dreams.

How you’ll succeed

You’ll have plenty of ways to develop at BDO; you might build deeper expertise in what you already do, take on something new or simply get better at the things that matter to you.

How and where you work matters too. Our agile working framework is designed around our Better Together approach: bringing more in-person time with clients and teams, creating more opportunities to share ideas, build confidence and develop day-to-day.

Whatever success looks like to you, you won’t be shaping it alone. You’ll have people around you who want you to do well, and plenty of opportunities to make it all count. 

That’s how we’ll all continue to succeed by shaping what matters.

Apply now.

At BDO, we want everyone to feel included, valued and able to succeed. We welcome people from all backgrounds and are committed to improving access to opportunities – work we've been recognised for as Company of the Year at the 2026 British Diversity Awards. Because we know different experiences and perspectives make us stronger.

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