Bid Manager Lead

Meet the Team

The CPX (Customer Proposal Xceleration) team is a relatively new group within Cisco's Global Sales Strategy and Planning Organization. You will spend most of your time working with Bid Managers and our stakeholders. You will be part of a larger team whose focus is on accelerating the creation of and the submission of proposals whether through our team of expert Bid Managers or via the tooling that we have developed.

What You'll Do

The Bid Manager Lead oversees a team of Bid Managers responsible for the development and submission of all assigned proposals from initial request through final delivery to customers. You will lead and manage Cisco's bid management organization, ensuring adherence to standard processes and templates while driving continuous improvement across the team. This role involves strategic oversight of the RFP pipeline, resource allocation, team development, stakeholder reporting and collaboration with Account Managers and extended members of the Account Teams to optimize proposal outcomes. This position reports to the Senior Director of Customer Proposal Xceleration (CPX).

Who You Are

The ideal candidate must be a proven leader with strong strategic thinking, team management, and communication skills. Building and maintaining relationships across Cisco Sellers, Subject Matter Experts, Cisco Legal, managing stakeholder expectations, and developing high-performing teams is as critical as ensuring excellence in proposal delivery. The ideal candidate has extensive experience managing both proactive proposals (without an RFx) and RFx responses at scale.

This position is responsible for leading, developing, and scaling our Bid Management capabilities across all RFP/RFI responses and proactive proposals. The individual will ensure consistently professional work across the team and must demonstrate proven ability to build and lead diverse teams of bid professionals while fostering synergy with senior executives, sales professionals, and subject matter experts.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Proposal Management Leadership (7+ years experience)
• Proven track record managing proposal teams in fast-paced technical environments
• Experience with complex, multi-million-dollar opportunities and enterprise-level RFx responses
• 3+ years people management and team development experience
• Experience collaborating with cross-functional teams (Legal, Sales, SMEs, executives)

Preferred Qualifications:

• Ability to manage matrix relationships and influence without direct authority
• Deep understanding of bid process management and proposal development methodologies
• Strong people leadership skills with experience developing and retaining high-performing teams
• Performance management, coaching, and talent development capabilities
• Ability to recruit, hire, and onboard team members effectively
• Exceptional verbal and written communication skills with ability to present to senior executive
• Ability to translate business requirements into operational excellence
• Strong reporting and insights generation capabilities
• Specific experience with Responsive platform or similar RFx/content management tool
• Knowledge of proposal automation technologies and AI-driven content solution
• Understanding of Cisco's product portfolio, competitive landscape, and market positioning
• Experience in technology/networking industry proposal environment
• Familiarity with enterprise sales cycles and technical solution selling
• Experience managing departmental budgets and financial planning
• Understanding of cost allocation and resource optimization models
• Vendor management and contract negotiation experience

Why Cisco?

At Cisco, we're revolutionizing how data and infrastructure connect and protect organizations in the AI era - and beyond. We've been innovating fearlessly for 40 years to create solutions that power how humans and technology work together across the physical and digital worlds. These solutions provide customers with unparalleled security, visibility, and insights across the entire digital footprint. Simply put - we power the future.

Fueled by the depth and breadth of our technology, we experiment and create meaningful solutions. Add to that our worldwide network of doers and experts, and you'll see that the opportunities to grow and build are limitless. We work as a team, collaborating with empathy to make really big things happen on a global scale. Because our solutions are everywhere, our impact is everywhere.

We are Cisco, and our power starts with you.