About The Role

Hippo is seeking an accomplished Senior Bid Manager to join its growing bids team. Reporting to the Head of Bid, the Senior Bid Manager will lead large, complex, and strategically critical bids, often for multiple opportunities concurrently. A key focus will be to develop and refine winning bid strategies, ensuring alignment with overall business objectives. Additionally, the Senior Bid Manager will play a vital role in mentoring and guiding other members of the bid team, contributing to the overall development and success of the function.

Accountabilities

Manage the delivery of high-quality bids: Leading and managing multiple concurrent bids end-to-end, taking full ownership from opportunity identification and qualification through to proposal development, submission, negotiation and lessons learned. Creating high-quality, persuasive, and client-focused proposals that meet all requirements, including large and complex bids.

Leading and coordinating cross-functional bid teams: Providing bid thought leadership and subject matter expertise, effectively directing and motivating teams comprising sales, technical, legal, finance, and other SME's.

Ensuring bid governance and compliance: Adhering to internal policies, industry regulations, and client requirements throughout the bid lifecycle and overseeing compliance and quality assurance of other team members' bids.

Team performance: Providing coaching and mentoring to support team members and wider stakeholders, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and high-quality results.

Innovation and continuous improvement: Leading bid capability projects to improve bid services and offerings.

Reporting, bid analysis and insights: Tracking bid outcomes, analysing success rates, supporting administration processes and providing insights and recommendations for improvement to senior management.

Skills and experience that you need

• Significant experience in bid management within a digital or data consultancy services business (100+ people/£25m+ turnover)
• Significant experience as a bid manager and in the bid production process, including complex commercial proposals
• Notable experience managing medium-large (£10m+) public sector (and ideally private sector) bids
• Notable experience of defining and implementing bid strategies maximising Probability of win (Pwin)
• Notable experience utilising public sector digital procurement frameworks e.g. Digital Outcomes & Specialists, G-Cloud, Digital Specialists and Programmes
• Experience of being able to operate under pressure and respond to tight deadlines, whilst making sensible decisions
• Experience Implementing industry best practices e.g. UK APMP certified
• Experience of building commercial partnerships with other suppliers and consortiums
• Experience of leadership and managing, mentoring and coaching team members and wider community
• Proven track record of winning competitive bids

• Exceptional bid management skills, including planning, writing, reviewing and organising - the ability to work in a systematic way to get stuff done
• Exceptional communication skills, able to present and influence credibly and effectively at all levels of the organisation
• Strong commercial awareness and understanding of what makes a successful sales strategy
• Strong stakeholder management, team leadership and strategic thinking skills
• Ability to plan and meet deadlines in accordance with changing requirements
• Ability to consume large volumes of bid information and identify the critical details that will influence a response
• Ability to manage others to meet deadlines and deliver quality work using a matrix approach to management
• An appreciation and knowledge of the Government Service Standard

What makes us great

• Contributory pension scheme (Hippo 6% with employee contributions of 2%)
• 25 days holiday plus UK public holidays
• Perkbox access for a wide range of discounts
• Critical illness cover
• Life assurance and death in service cover
• Volunteer days
• Cycle-to-work scheme for the avid cyclists
• Salary sacrifice electric vehicles scheme
• Season ticket loans
• Financial and general wellbeing sessions
• Flexible benefits scheme with options of:
  • private health cover
  • private dental cover
  • additional company pension contributions
  • additional holidays (up to an extra 2 days)
  • wellbeing contribution
  • charity contributions
  • tree planting

Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at Hippo

At Hippo, we're dedicated to creating a diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace that works for everyone. We understand that having a diverse team unlocks our capacity for innovation, creativity and problem solving. Only by building a community of diverse perspectives, cultures and socio-economic backgrounds can we create an environment where all can contribute and thrive.

We actively encourage applications from underrepresented groups including women, ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+, neurodivergent and people with disabilities. We are committed to providing an inclusive and accessible recruitment process that reflects our workplace culture. We are a registered Disability Confident Employer, Mindful Employer, Endometriosis Friendly Employer and a member of the Armed Forces Covenant. Hippo continually strives to remove barriers, provide accommodations and offer reasonable adjustments to ensure equity throughout our practices.

At Hippo, we design with empathy and build for impact. We do this by combining data-informed evidence, human-centred design and software engineering. We're a digital services partner who is genuinely invested in helping our clients thrive as modern organisations. Our delivery methodology is truly agile, from concept to reality, supporting innovation and continuous improvement to achieve your desired outcomes.

We firmly believe that technology should serve humanity, not the other way around. We take a human-centred approach to everything we do because we understand that complex problems require a service design approach. This means understanding how users behave and ensuring our solutions work for them in the real world.

Our combination of data, design, and engineering delivers bespoke digital services that make a positive and meaningful impact on organisations and society. We're confident in our abilities, authentic in our approach, and passionate about what we do. If you're looking for a digital services partner that can deliver real results, let us help you build for the future and make a lasting impact.

Hippo locations

We are headquartered in Leeds and located across the UK in Glasgow , Manchester, Birmingham, London and Bristol. We're on the lookout for top talent nationwide, so don't let location hold you back from applying. We welcome candidates from all over the UK who possess the flexibility to work from any of our locations. Plus, we offer a generous relocation support package of up to £8k to help make your move a smooth one. It's worth noting that, given the dynamic nature of our business, you may be required to work on-site at client locations or from your own home.