Capture & Proposal Manager

About EdgeRunner AI: EdgeRunner AI is an American dual-use research lab building frontier open-weight AI for the U.S. military and heavily regulated industries. Our goal is to increase our chance of winning the fight by arming the warfighter with domain-specific AI agents that create a common operating picture, enhance battle readiness from training to deployment, mitigate risk in live combat, and bridge the gap between human and machine. Applied AI has the potential to transform the DoD, but adoption has been blocked due to several factors: lack of domain expertise, opaque training data, cost-prohibitive and compute-intensive applications, potentially dangerous biases, and dependency upon internet access that requires moving data to the cloud. We seek to solve these challenges by developing safe, secure, and transparent AI solutions that can run on-device at the tactical edge. We’ve partnered with organizations critical to our national security, including the U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force, and U.S. Space Force, and have raised $17.5M in funding from leading VCs, including Madrona Ventures, HP Tech Ventures, Four Rivers Ventures, and Alumni Ventures.

About the Role: This is the first dedicated hire on our capture and proposal team. You'll work directly with the VP of Growth, alongside our GTM team that owns customer relationships and the engineers who build what we propose.

Business Development

• Find and screen opportunities. Watch SAM.gov, DSIP, OTA consortium notices, Tradewinds and agency forecasts, check what you find against our fit criteria, and send a weekly digest of what's worth a look.

• Research the customer. Pull award history, incumbents, competitors and budget lines from FPDS, USAspending and budget justification books, and summarize each target on one page.

• Keep the pipeline accurate. Maintain every opportunity in HubSpot so stage, value and dates support forecasting, and produce the weekly pipeline report.

• Track partners. Keep a running list of teaming partners and what they bring, and move NDAs and teaming agreements from our templates through review to signature.

Capture

• Keep the team on process. Set up each pursuit in our capture and proposal workflow, walk sales staff through gate reviews, capture plans and proposal steps, and hold everyone to the schedule.

• Prepare gate reviews. Assemble the bid/no-bid package for each opportunity (requirements, competition, fit, effort and timeline) so we can make the bid call quickly.

• Keep capture plans current. Maintain each capture plan from our template: customer notes, competitor analysis, teaming status, open questions and the pursuit schedule.

• Work the pre-solicitation process. Track draft solicitations, industry days and question deadlines, prepare RFI responses and questions for review, and take notes at customer and industry events.

Proposals

• Shred and plan. Break each solicitation into a compliance matrix, annotated outline and proposal schedule within days of release.

• Manage the schedule. Hold kickoffs, assign sections, track writers and subject matter experts against their due dates, and follow up before deadlines slip.

• Write first drafts. Use our AI proposal assistant and content library to produce resumes, past performance, management sections and boilerplate, and turn engineering notes into drafts for the technical leads to finish.

• Run color-team reviews. Schedule Pink, Red and Gold Team reviews, consolidate comments, and track each one to resolution.

• Produce and submit. Check every volume against the compliance matrix and formatting rules, assemble forms and certifications, and submit through DSIP, SAM.gov, consortium portals or email, with confirmation in hand before the deadline.

• Close the loop. Request debriefs, log lessons learned, and keep the content library current: past performance, resumes, boilerplate and graphics.

Pricing and contracts

• Support pricing. Gather labor, rate and material inputs, build bases of estimate and pricing workbooks to direction from the VP, and check the math before anything goes out.

• Prepare quotes and subcontracts. For commercial and federal customers, draft ROMs, quotes and subcontract paperwork from our templates, route them for approval, and track each one to close.

• Keep registrations current. Maintain our SAM.gov registration (including representations and certifications), DSIP account and consortium memberships, so no bid stalls on paperwork.

Qualifications:

• 3 to 5 years experience supporting federal business development, capture or proposals, as a proposal coordinator or specialist, a capture or BD analyst, or in a similar role.

• Hands-on experience with federal solicitations, including DoD proposals under SBIR/STTR, CSO, OTA or BAA. You've shredded solicitations, built compliance matrices, kept the proposal schedule and submitted on time through government portals.

• Shipley training, or working command of the Shipley process: gate reviews, capture plans, compliance matrices, storyboards and color-team reviews. APMP Foundation certification also counts.

• Working knowledge of how the government buys: Sections L and M, FAR and DFARS basics, the main contract types, and how SBIRs, OTAs and CSOs differ from FAR-based buys.

• Fluency with the federal BD toolset: SAM.gov, DSIP, FPDS and USAspending, a market intelligence tool such as GovWin or HigherGov, and a CRM you keep accurate.

• Self-direction. Hand you a new solicitation and you'll set up the pursuit, take the proposal to submission and flag problems early, without being managed through it. Experience keeping many deadlines moving at once without dropping one.

• Careful writing, editing and formatting skills, and strong skills in Word, Excel and PowerPoint or their Google equivalents. Comfort working with AI writing tools. You'll produce proposals with ours.

• U.S. citizenship and the ability to obtain and keep a security clearance.

Preferred:

• APMP Practitioner certification.

• Experience with HubSpot.

• Experience with pricing spreadsheets, bases of estimate or commercial quotes.

• Experience proposing software or AI products, not only services.

• Familiarity with Army, Navy, Air Force, Space Force or special operations customers, including through military service.

• Time at a startup or small business.

• An active Secret clearance or higher.

Why join us: We offer competitive salary, equity, and benefits, with individual pay determined by experience, relevant education, and/or training.

• 100% covered health, dental, and vision for employees; 50% for dependants

• 100% remote first culture; you can work from anywhere in the US full-time

• 401K program

• WeWork access

• Unlimited PTO

• IT stipend for purchasing new equipment

EdgeRunner AI is an equal opportunity employer, and qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender perception or identity, national origin, age, marital status, protected veteran status, or disability status.

Even if you don’t perfectly match our job description and requirements, please still apply if you are passionate about our mission and this technology.