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Salary: USD 110,000 - 150,000 / annual
Icarus is seeking a Strategic Growth Manager to own the full lifecycle of government contracting opportunities—from opportunity identification through contract award and follow-on work. You will report to the Director of Growth and work directly with the Head of Business and CEO in a high-ownership role at a fast-moving defense startup.
You will hunt and qualify opportunities across SAM.gov, SBIR/STTR topics, Vulcan, ONI, consortia, BAAs, and other government solicitation channels. You own the opportunity pipeline tracker, monitoring status, deadlines, owners, and win probability for every active pursuit, with weekly rollups to leadership. Nothing gets missed on your watch—you monitor solicitation amendments, Q&A windows, and submission deadlines.
You will drive proposals end to end: outlines, compliance matrices, volume drafting, coordinating technical inputs from engineering and pricing from finance, final production, and on-time submission. You draft RFI/RFP responses, white paper calls, and capability requests. You own submission mechanics across government portals (SAM.gov, DSIP, Vulcan, eBuy, consortium portals) and ensure every submission is compliant and complete. You carry awards across the finish line through evaluation-phase Q&A, clarifications, pitch and demo logistics, representations and certifications, registrations, and contract execution paperwork. You support follow-on contracting including modifications, option exercises, and continuation proposals.
A core part of this role is building AI-enabled processes and automation. You will use agentic AI as a force multiplier—automating opportunity discovery and solicitation monitoring, AI-assisted proposal drafting and compliance checking, and pipeline workflows that run without manual touch. You are expected to use AI daily in your own work and turn what works into repeatable playbooks the team adopts. The standard: every quarter, something the business team used to do by hand runs automatically because you built it.
You will represent Icarus at conferences, trade shows, and customer engagements (AUSA, SOF Week, regional and international events), working with government, prime, congressional, and investor stakeholders. You assist the Director of External Affairs on event strategy and own event follow-up—every lead, contact, and commitment gets captured, actioned, and tracked within 48 hours. You support VIP engagements and serve as a consistent, credible Icarus point of contact.
You will maintain core BD collateral (capability statements, quad charts, briefing decks, one-pagers) and keep CRM and pipeline hygiene tight, capturing after-actions from meetings and events.
Success in the first 12 months means: every qualified solicitation is identified, tracked, and dispositioned with zero missed deadlines; proposal production runs on repeatable processes with reduced leadership hours per submission; at least two captures owned end to end from identification through award; event follow-ups convert with 48-hour actioning; measurable automation wins with agentic AI workflows reducing per-proposal hours; and recognition as a known, trusted Icarus point of contact.
QUALIFICATIONS:
- 2–4 years in business development, capture, account management, or go-to-market roles; defense, aerospace, or govtech exposure strongly preferred
- Exceptional written communication: able to turn engineer inputs into compliant, compelling proposal prose on deadline
- Demonstrated fluency with AI tools in daily work—prompt-driven drafting, research, and workflow automation—and instinct to systematize rather than repeat manual tasks
- Strong interpersonal presence: comfortable and credible in front of senior military, government, congressional, and investor audiences
- Highly organized, deadline-driven, and self-directed; thrives with ownership and ambiguity
- Willingness to travel (~20%), including international; ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. security clearance
- U.S. citizenship required
