The Department

As a business, we are on an ambitious growth path with the Marketing & BD Group playing a key role in driving our success.  We are ambitious for our colleagues, and want our people to thrive in an environment of collaboration.  Our new M&BD strategy has been developed on the back of in-depth review programmes, and signed off by our UK Board, meaning that it is embedded into our business.

The Team

We know that to secure new business and further growth, we have to really differentiate ourselves in a crowded market - our Bids team is crucial to this.

The team works alongside partners, lawyers and other colleagues to win new work from existing clients, short-term prospects and longer-term targets in line with our sector pipelines and business plans.  A typical day can see you focused on managing the proposal and tender process, drafting content, co-ordinating strategically significant firmwide panel appointments and preparing pitch teams .... it's a fast-paced world, working across sector, practice area and office legal teams, as well as with other business services professionals.

The Role

We're now looking for a new Manager to join the other Managers who drive our bid processes from early prep stage to bid no bid, go live and post-bid debrief / follow up. You'll work as a tightly-knit team to ensure we submit high quality, compelling pitches and maximise our chances of success. A key part of the role will be working closely with marketing, knowledge management, IT and finance teams to showcase our offering and meet clients' needs and expectations. 

The Person

To be successful in this role you'll need as a minimum:

• proven experience of managing the end-to-end bid process, ideally within a professional services' environment
• managed virtual bid teams and inputs from key stakeholders, typically engaging with lawyers and other subject matter experts, pricing and commercial specialists, risk and compliance colleagues and other business services advisers
• the ability to balance project managing live bids, regularly in parallel, and draft creative content against clear criteria
• skills in developing clear win strategies and overarching themes for each bid
• experience in driving continuous improvement through post-bid reviews and debriefs, both internally and with clients
• experience in building relationships across a company and coaching colleagues at pitch/presentation stage

The role can be based in any of our regional offices (Bristol, Edinburgh, Leeds, Newcastle, Plymouth and Southampton) or remotely as long as getting to an office when you need to isn't an issue.  We operate a hybrid working policy and most full-time employees typically spend around 3 days in the office and 2 days working from home – we're always flexible and balance what our people need alongside what the role requires.

What makes it great to work here?

We continually work hard to create an open culture that sets us apart from other firms. Our culture gives us much more of a human feel, emphasising that we're more than just suits!

As signatories to the Mindful Business Charter, it's important to us that our people are able to maintain healthy and happy lives, both in and out of work. We have a number of resources and initiatives designed to support health and wellbeing and we're very happy to talk flexible working, full-time or part-time working patterns.

Through our DEI initiatives we create an environment in which difference is valued. We have an Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Group, led by our Board Sponsor, which works with our colleague networks (we currently have firm supported networks for race, ethnicity, and cultural heritage, LGBTQ+, disabilities, families, and women's career development and we're in constant dialogue with our people about how we expand our networks to better support everybody). Find out more about ED&I at WBD here. We encourage applicants from all social backgrounds, ethnicities, disabilities, gender identities and sexual orientations.

We are committed to ensuring our recruitment process is inclusive and accessible to all. If you have a disability or long term condition and need us to make any adjustments to give you the best possible recruitment process, please let us know by contacting the recruiter on the right hand side of this page.

We are an in-house recruitment team and will always aim to fill our roles directly in the first instance. If you're an agency, please click here for ways that you can work with us.