JOB TITLE: Bid Manager
SALARY: From £61,344pa plus the extensive benefits list below.
LOCATION: Edinburgh.
HOURS: Full-time.
WORKING PATTERN: Our work style is hybrid, which involves spending at least two days per week, or 40% of our time, at our Edinburgh hub.
Insurance & Wealth
Insurance and Wealth help personal and business customers with their long-term protection, retirement and investment needs. We support around 10 million customers with assets under administration of £155 billion and annuity payments in retirement of over £1 billion every year.
About the role
This is an exciting opportunity within the Scottish Widows Bid Team. As a Bid Manager, you'll play a key role in retaining existing clients and winning new business opportunities in the Workplace pension market. You'll lead multiple strategic bids and retention activities from qualification through to submission, bringing together stakeholders from across the business to develop compelling, customer-focused responses.
Alongside delivery of live opportunities, you'll help drive the evolution of our bid function by embracing AI, automation and continuous improvement initiatives that enhance efficiency, quality and scalability. Working closely with distribution teams, proposition specialists, subject matter experts and senior leaders, you'll help shape bid strategy, challenge thinking and ensure Scottish Widows is positioned in the strongest possible way to succeed.
This is a varied and highly visible role that offers the opportunity to influence decision-making, develop deep market expertise and contribute to the future growth of the business. This role aligns with our ambition to build a high-performing, innovative and customer-focused bid function that delivers outstanding stakeholder and customer outcomes.
Duties of the role include:
•Leading the delivery of new business and retention opportunities from qualification through to submission.
•Developing bid strategies, win themes and compelling customer-focused proposals.
•Producing high-quality written responses, presentations and client-facing materials.
•Managing relationships with stakeholders across sales, proposition and specialist teams.
•Providing challenge and insight to strengthen customer outcomes and improve bid competitiveness.
•Driving adoption of AI, automation and continuous improvement across bid activities.
•Supporting the development of bid content, templates and knowledge assets.
•Embedding lessons learned and best practice across future opportunities.
•Coaching colleagues and contributing to team capability development.
•Ensuring opportunities are managed in line with agreed governance, systems and processes.
Essential criteria, you'll need:
•Proven bid management experience.
•Excellent written, verbal and presentation skills.
•Ability to manage multiple priorities and deliver under pressure.
•Strong stakeholder management and influencing skills.
•Commercial awareness and strong customer focus.
•Experience developing proposals, tenders or client-facing submissions.
•A track record of driving improvements and delivering positive change.
•A collaborative approach and commitment to team success.
Desirable criteria, that would help but aren't essential:
•Knowledge of the workplace pensions market.
•Experience of both new business and client retention activity.
•Experience using AI, automation or bid technology solutions.
•Knowledge of proposal automation or content management platforms.
Benefits package includes:
•A generous pension contribution of up to 15%.
•An annual performance-related bonus.
•Share schemes including free shares.
•Benefits you can adapt to your lifestyle, such as discounted shopping.
•30 days holiday, with bank holidays on top.
•A range of wellbeing initiatives and generous parental leave policies.
