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Shield AI, a venture-backed defense-tech company, is seeking a Director of Proposals to lead and scale its proposal organization. The role owns the full proposal lifecycle—from intake and solicitation analysis through planning, development, reviews, production, and submission—for complex defense, aerospace, and national security opportunities.
Key responsibilities include:
**Proposal Organization & Talent:** Lead, coach, and develop proposal managers and teams. Build workforce and capacity plans aligned with the opportunity pipeline and regional demand. Establish team culture grounded in candid feedback, excellent writing, and shared ownership of results.
**Proposal Strategy & Customer Persuasion:** Partner with account teams and Regional Deal Strategists to shape proposal strategy, win themes, and discriminators. Translate complex offerings spanning autonomous platforms, software, payloads, integration, training, and sustainment into clear customer value narratives. Set standards for executive summaries, technical narratives, graphics, and integrated storytelling. Personally write, edit, and challenge critical content on priority pursuits. Ensure all claims are accurate, substantiated, and consistent with approved capabilities.
**Proposal Execution & Compliance:** Own proposal schedules, compliance matrices, content plans, and review milestones. Lead disciplined color team reviews testing compliance, persuasiveness, technical accuracy, and alignment with deal strategy. Hold teams accountable for complete, accurate, and timely submissions with rigorous version control and delivery confirmation.
**Functional Alignment & Risk Management:** Coordinate contributions from Sales, Product, Engineering, Finance, Legal, Contracts, Delivery, and other subject matter experts. Ensure proposed scope, pricing, terms, and delivery commitments reflect approved decisions. Surface missing inputs, unsupported claims, and submission risks early with clear recommendations and schedule implications.
**Scalable Processes & Continuous Improvement:** Build and maintain a searchable library of approved proposal content, templates, proof points, and reusable response modules. Connect proposal content to approved capability definitions. Partner with GTM systems leaders to improve workflows and collaboration. Lead retrospectives and measure submission timeliness, compliance, response cycle time, rework, content reuse, and win rate.
The Director works closely with Regional Deal Strategists (who lead deal strategy and commercial construction) and account teams (who retain customer relationship ownership). Functional leaders retain authority over their respective decisions; the Director ensures those decisions are accurately reflected in proposals and escalates unresolved issues.
**Requirements:**
- Significant progressive experience leading proposals for complex defense, aerospace, national security, or government technology opportunities, with a demonstrated record of delivering competitive, compliant submissions.
- Experience leading proposal managers and multidisciplinary proposal teams, including hiring, coaching, performance management, and resource allocation across concurrent pursuits.
- Demonstrated ability to develop winning proposal strategies and translate technical capabilities into clear, credible customer value.
- Strong command of solicitation analysis, compliance matrices, proposal planning, color team reviews, content development, and submission production.
- Detail-oriented with exceptional writing and editing skills; ability to improve executive narratives and technical content under demanding deadlines.
- Experience coordinating contributions and securing decisions across Sales, Engineering, Product, Finance, Legal, Contracts, and delivery organizations.
- Familiarity with government acquisition and contracting requirements, including ability to identify proposal obligations and engage appropriate experts.
- Sound judgment in handling sensitive information, managing competing priorities, and escalating risks with clear recommendations.
- Record of building practical processes and reusable content that improve quality and speed in a growing organization.
**Preferred qualifications:**
- Experience supporting both U.S. government and international defense proposals, including partner contributions and coordination of export and contracting reviews.
- Experience with offerings combining hardware, software, integration, training, field services, and sustainment.
- Experience supporting autonomous systems, aviation, defense software, or emerging technology pursuits.
- Experience establishing or scaling a centralized proposals function while preserving responsiveness to regional account teams.
- Familiarity with Shipley methods, APMP certification, or comparable proposal management training.
- Experience applying approved automation and AI tools to proposal workflows with appropriate information protection and human review.
