Strategic Capture Manager – Defense & Infrastructure Programs

About the role

BlastOne is a leading global supplier in the Industrial Corrosion Control Industry. This role is focused on converting qualified pipeline into awarded business. It is not primarily a top-of-funnel lead generation role.

Responsibilities

• Own capture management activity for assigned strategic pursuits from qualification through proposal, negotiation, award, and transition to execution.
• Drive qualified opportunities forward with clear next steps, pursuit cadence, action tracking, and internal accountability.
• Help convert strategic pipeline into awarded contracts by improving deal strategy, customer engagement, and proposal quality.
• Maintain pursuit plans for assigned major opportunities, including customer objectives, decision criteria, stakeholder maps, competitor positioning, risks, and action plans.
• Support the VP of Client Partnerships in managing large, complex opportunities with defense primes, shipyards, and major industrial customers.
• Identify obstacles that could prevent a deal from closing and develop practical action plans to overcome them.
• Keep opportunities from stalling by maintaining consistent customer follow-up and internal momentum.
• Build and maintain relationships with key customer stakeholders involved in major pursuits, including operations, engineering, facilities, procurement, program management, production leadership, and executive sponsors.
• Lead customer meetings, support site visits, discovery sessions, facility walkdowns, technical workshops, and proposal presentations.
• Help identify customer pain points, decision drivers, funding realities, procurement timelines, operational risks, and success criteria.
• Position BlastOne as a Strategic Infrastructure and Production-Systems partner, not simply an equipment supplier.
• Develop opportunity-specific win strategies that clearly define why BlastOne should win, what matters most to the customer, and how the company should position itself.
• Identify customer hot buttons, competitive threats, discriminators, pricing posture, teaming needs, and commercial risks.
• Translate BlastOne’s technical, operational, and project delivery strengths into customer-specific value propositions.
• Ensure proposals are written around the customer’s business problem and operating objectives, not simply around BlastOne’s products or equipment.
• Support post-proposal follow-up, clarifications, negotiations, and customer decision support.
• Lead cross-functional pursuit activity across sales, engineering, estimating, operations, project delivery, contracts, finance, supply chain, and executive leadership.
• Create clarity around who owns each pursuit action, when it is due, and what decision or customer outcome it supports.
• Prepare internal pursuit updates for leadership, including deal status, risks, next steps, customer feedback, and required executive involvement.
• Escalate technical, commercial, legal, schedule, or relationship risks before they become deal blockers.
• Help ensure proposed solutions are not only winnable, but executable and profitable.
• Support a smooth transition from capture to execution after award, including documentation of commitments, assumptions, risks, scope decisions, and customer expectations.
• Maintain accurate CRM records for assigned opportunities, including stage, value, probability, next step, customer decision timeline, stakeholders, risks, and pursuit status.
• Improve forecast reliability for large, long-cycle opportunities.
• Track pursuit milestones, customer commitments, proposal deadlines, and internal deliverables.
• Help leadership understand which opportunities are real, which are at risk, and what is required to win.
• Contribute to a more disciplined and predictable strategic sales process.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of experience in capture management, strategic sales, business development, complex project sales, program development, or major account management.
• Demonstrated experience helping win large, complex opportunities with long sales cycles and multiple stakeholders.
• Experience working with defense primes, shipyards, federal contractors, heavy industrial customers, engineering firms, or major capital project owners.
• Strong understanding of opportunity qualification, pursuit strategy, proposal development, customer engagement, and deal progression.
• Ability to lead cross-functional teams without direct authority.
• Strong commercial judgment, including the ability to understand scope, risk, pricing, contract terms, customer expectations, and execution constraints.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to brief executives, lead customer-facing discussions, and summarize complex issues into clear decisions and next steps.
• Strong organizational discipline and ability to manage multiple complex pursuits at the same time.
• Willingness to travel frequently for customer meetings, site visits, industry events, and internal pursuit sessions.

Preferred Skills

• Experience with Shipley, Miller Heiman, Challenger, MEDDICC, or similar structured sales or capture methodologies.
• Experience supporting Department of Defense, Navy, shipbuilding, ship repair, maritime, aerospace, or defense manufacturing programs.
• Familiarity with FAR / DFARS environments, prime contractor procurement processes, IDIQs, OTAs, sole-source justifications, or major capital program acquisition cycles.
• Experience with engineered systems, design-build, EPC, industrial construction, production facilities, automation, sustainment, or lifecycle services.
• Ability to understand technical requirements, drawings, specifications, RFPs, RFQs, statements of work, and proposal evaluation criteria.
• Existing relationships within defense primes, naval shipyards, shipbuilders, engineering firms, or industrial infrastructure markets.
• Experience using Salesforce or similar CRM systems to manage complex opportunity pipelines.