Sr. Proposal Writer
This is an exciting opportunity to join a fast-growing startup in the aerospace/defense industry as their Sr. Proposal Writer, creating clear, accurate, and persuasive content that drives contract wins and supports customers. You'll work closely with product, engineering, capture, and proposal teams to develop everything from proposal narratives and white papers to operational manuals and release notes—ensuring every document is precise, compelling, and aligned with mission needs.
In this role, you'll help shape winning proposal strategies, integrate key differentiators, and deliver user-focused technical documentation that meets the highest standards of clarity and quality. You'll also play a key role in building scalable documentation processes, tools, and templates that raise the bar for written materials across the company.
Responsibilities:
- Produce, review, and refine user-focused documentation for capture, proposal, and business development efforts; including white papers, technical narratives, proposal responses, and pricing materials.
- Collaborate with SMEs and cross-functional teams to create proposal artifacts that are clear, persuasive, compliant, and customer-focused.
- Verify content accuracy and alignment with RFx requirements, company standards, capture strategies, and industry best practices.
- Partner with internal teams to gather insights, map user workflows, and ensure documentation meets all customer and contractual requirements.
- Oversee contract deliverable documentation to ensure submissions are accurate, polished, compliant, and delivered on time.
- Work with Capture Managers, Solution Architects, and SMEs to translate technical concepts into compelling, customer-ready proposal content.
- Develop and maintain technical resources such as manuals, operational procedures, checklists, templates, troubleshooting guides, and release notes for both internal and external use.
- Contribute to style guides, processes, workflows, and toolkits that enhance documentation quality, scalability, and efficiency.
- Manage multiple documentation projects simultaneously, adapting quickly to evolving priorities in a fast-paced environment.
- Identify documentation gaps or risks, implement proactive solutions to keep deliverables on track.
- Foster a culture of documentation excellence by creating training resources, templates, and process improvements that empower contributions across the organization.
- Support the selection and deployment of tools for authoring, version control, publishing, and content management to optimize workflows.
Requirements and Desired Experience:
- Bachelor's degree in English, Communications, Technical Writing or a similar field.
- 5+ years of experience as a technical writer, preferably supporting proposal, capture, or business development documentation efforts within the aerospace/defense or technology sectors.
- Proven experience of producing, editing, and managing complex proposals and technical documentation in high-pressure, deadline-driven environments.
- Skilled at distilling input from technical experts and cross-functional teams into clear, concise, and persuasive written materials.
- Adept at integrating win strategies and customer-focused language into proposal narratives that engage and persuade evaluators.
- Experienced in developing and maintaining technical manuals, operational guides, and user-facing documentation.
- Strong knowledge of Federal proposal structures and writing styles, including RFP/RFQ analysis, compliance matrices, and narrative development for technical, management, and past performance volumes.
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills; able to tailor messaging for various audiences.
- Strong project management and organizational skills; able to manage competing priorities independently while collaborating effectively across teams.
- Experience supporting contract deliverables; knowledgeable of government solicitation processes.
- U.S. Citizenship is required; must be able to obtain a DoD security clearance.
- Experience working in a fast-paced, high-growth environment or startup is a plus.
- Knowledge of capture management principles and the business development lifecycle preferred.
- Familiarity with defense industry standards, DoD regulations, and proposal compliance requirements is preferred.
- Experience writing technical user-facing documentation, style guides, and scalable documentation processes is a plus.
- Military exposure and experience, particularly with technical documentation writing and formatting standards (e.g., MIL-STD-40051, S1000D) is a plus.
Compensation (DOE): $115k - $160k annual base salary