Defense Capture Manager

About the role

Mile 2 is seeking an experienced Defense Capture Manager to lead the identification, qualification, capture, and pursuit of strategic opportunities across the DoW. This is not a traditional business development role. We are seeking a proven capture professional with a track record of successfully leading competitive federal pursuits from early opportunity shaping through contract award.

Primary Responsibilities

• Lead captures throughout the full business development lifecycle, from qualification through contract award.
• Develop and execute comprehensive capture plans, win strategies, competitive assessments, and action plans.
• Shape opportunities prior to solicitation release through customer engagement, market intelligence, and strategic positioning.
• Lead bid/no-bid recommendations and opportunity gate reviews.
• Develop and maintain opportunity-specific capture artifacts, schedules, risk registers, and decision briefings.
• Drive cross-functional capture teams to ensure alignment across technical, operational, pricing, and proposal activities.

Opportunity Shaping

• Develop customer-focused win themes and discriminators aligned to mission priorities.
• Conduct competitive intelligence, Black Hat analyses, SWOT assessments, and Price-to-Win evaluations.
• Identify teaming opportunities and help negotiate strategic partnerships with primes, subcontractors, and technology partners.
• Cook up customer call plans and engagement strategies with Business Development leadership.

Proposal Leadership & Development

• Serve as the capture lead throughout proposal development, ensuring continuity from pre-RFP activities through submission.
• Collaborate closely with Proposal Managers to develop compliant, compelling, and technically credible proposals.
• Contribute directly to proposal writing, including executive summaries, management approaches, technical narratives, win themes, resumes, oral presentations, and supporting artifacts.
• Participate in color team reviews and incorporate reviewer feedback into final deliverables.
• Ensure proposal content reflects customer priorities, discriminators, and overall capture strategy.

Customer & Market Engagement

• Build and maintain relationships across DoW acquisition organizations, program offices, and mission stakeholders.
• Attend industry days, conferences, technical exchanges, and customer meetings.
• Monitor market trends, acquisition forecasts, contract vehicles, and emerging opportunities.
• Maintain accurate opportunity data, forecasts, and capture activities within the company's CRM.

Strategic Growth Support

• Strategically plan and support long-range growth initiatives.
• Identify adjacent opportunities, follow-on work, and strategic partnerships.
• Contribute to corporate growth planning, pipeline reviews, and annual growth objectives.

Requirements

• Active Secret clearance.
• Bachelor's degree in Business, Engineering, Computer Science, Management, or a related discipline (or equivalent experience).
• Minimum of 5 years of dedicated Defense Capture Management experience within the federal government contracting industry.
• Minimum of 5 years of experience writing and supporting competitive federal proposals, including technical and management volumes.
• Demonstrated success leading captures from opportunity identification through award.
• Experience managing pursuits valued from several million dollars to $100M+.
• Strong understanding of the federal acquisition lifecycle, including FAR/DFARS, IDIQs, Task Orders, GWACs, OTA, SBIR/STTR transition opportunities.
• Experience leading cross-functional capture teams.
• Excellent proposal writing, editing, and executive communication skills.
• Experience developing capture plans, win strategies, competitive analyses, and executive briefings.
• Strong organizational skills with the ability to manage multiple simultaneous pursuits.

Core Competencies

• Strategic thinking and opportunity shaping.
• Strong technical aptitude.
• Excellent proposal writing and storytelling.
• Executive-level communication and presentation skills.
• Competitive analysis and market assessment.
• Team leadership without direct authority.
• Customer relationship management.
• Time management and execution across multiple pursuits.
• Collaboration across technical and business organizations.
• High attention to detail and commitment to quality.