Who is Hagerman?
Since 1908 The Hagerman Family has built trust and earned confidence as leaders in diverse markets of the construction industry. We are a construction solution provider.
Location: This position will be located at one of our Hagerman Offices (Fishers IN, Fort Wayne IN, or Louisville KY). This is not a remote position.
Job Summary:
Are you a strategic thinker, persuasive writer, and project orchestrator who knows how to turn an opportunity into a winning pursuit?
Hagerman is looking for an experienced Proposal Manager to lead our Request for Proposal (RFP), Request for Qualifications (RFQ), and pursuit process from kickoff through final submission and interview.
In this role, you'll bring together people, strategy, content, and design to create compelling proposals and presentations that differentiate Hagerman and help us win work. You'll collaborate with business development, operations, marketing, and company leadership to understand each opportunity, uncover what matters most to the client, and translate our experience and expertise into a clear and persuasive story.
If you thrive on deadlines, enjoy bringing structure to complex projects, and know how to make technical information both understandable and compelling, this could be the opportunity for you.
What You'll Do:
- Lead Winning Pursuits
- Lead RFPs, RFQs, qualifications packages, proposals, and interview presentations from kickoff through final submission.
- Analyze solicitation requirements and develop pursuit strategies, win themes, messaging, and response plans.
- Create proposal schedules, assignments, milestones, and compliance requirements to keep pursuit teams on track.
- Facilitate proposal kickoff meetings, content reviews, and final quality-control processes.
- Coordinate input from executives, business development, operations, preconstruction, and other subject matter experts.
- Ensure every submission is accurate, responsive, compelling, professional, and delivered on time.
- Support interview preparation, including presentation development, messaging, rehearsals, and team coaching.
Tell the Hagerman Story
- Write, edit, and refine persuasive, client-focused content that clearly communicates Hagerman's value and differentiators.
- Translate technical construction information into clear and engaging messaging for a variety of audiences.
- Interview project teams and subject matter experts to uncover project stories, lessons learned, client successes, and differentiators.
- Develop and maintain project profiles, case studies, team resumes, market overviews, and other pursuit-related content.
- Support award submissions, brochures, thought leadership, and other strategic marketing initiatives.
Drive Quality & Brand Excellence
- Oversee proposal design, layout, production, proofreading, and final quality reviews.
- Maintain and continuously improve Hagerman's proposal content library, project information, resumes, boilerplate content, and marketing resources.
- Ensure proposals and presentations consistently represent Hagerman's brand, voice, and visual identity.
- Identify opportunities to improve the efficiency, consistency, and effectiveness of the pursuit process.
- Coordinate photography and other visual assets that strengthen Hagerman's project and corporate storytelling.
Collaborate & Build Relationships
- Serve as a trusted pursuit partner to business development, operations, marketing, and company leadership.
- Build relationships across the organization to gather information and develop strong, authentic proposal content.
- Collaborate with clients, architects, engineers, consultants, trade partners, and other industry stakeholders as needed.
- Represent Hagerman at industry associations, networking events, and business development functions.
What You'll Bring
We're looking for someone who combines strong writing and communication skills with the ability to lead complex, deadline-driven pursuits.
You'll be successful in this role if you bring:
- Strategic Thinking: You can look beyond simply answering an RFP and identify the story, strategy, and differentiators that create a compelling response.
- Exceptional Writing & Editing: You can take complex or technical information and turn it into clear, concise, persuasive content.
- Project Leadership: You know how to organize people, information, and competing deadlines while keeping a pursuit moving forward.
- Attention to Detail: You take pride in polished work and catch the details others may overlook.
- Collaboration: You're comfortable working with everyone from technical subject matter experts to executives and can confidently guide a team through the pursuit process.
- Curiosity & Initiative: You ask great questions, seek to understand the client's perspective, and continuously look for ways to improve our approach.
Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Communications, Journalism, English, Business, or a related field preferred.
- 5+ years of experience managing proposals, qualifications packages, presentations, and/or pursuit strategies.
- Experience with RFP and RFQ processes within the architecture, engineering, and construction (A/E/C) industry strongly preferred.
- Demonstrated ability to manage multiple complex pursuits and deadlines simultaneously.
- Exceptional writing, editing, proofreading, project management, and interpersonal communication skills.
- Experience developing and coordinating proposal and interview presentation content.
- Strong proficiency with Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite, particularly InDesign, or similar proposal development/design tools.
- Experience working with proposal content databases, CRM platforms, or content management systems is a plus.
What Success Looks Like
In this role:
- Pursuits are organized, strategic, compliant, and consistently delivered on time.
- Proposals go beyond checking the boxes and clearly communicate why Hagerman is the right partner for the client.
- Interview teams are prepared, confident, and aligned around a compelling message.
- Internal teams trust you to lead the pursuit process, ask the right questions, and bring out the best in contributors.
- Proposal and marketing content is accurate, engaging, visually polished, and consistent with the Hagerman brand.
- Proposal resources and processes become more efficient and effective over time.
- Your work contributes to stronger client relationships, more competitive pursuits, and increased win rates.
When you join Hagerman, you will help build the future, so it only makes sense that we invest in you. Hagerman's complete benefits package for regular, full-time employees includes:
- Relocation Accommodations
- Competitive Salary
- Annual Incentive
- Paid Holidays
- Vacation Days of Paid Time-off
- Affordable Medical, Prescription, Dental, and Vision Insurance
- 401k Retirement Program (with company match)
- Summer Hours
- Employee Assistance Program
- Employer-paid Life and AD&D Insurance, Short and Long Term Disability
- Voluntary Employee-paid Life and AD&D Insurance
- Continuing Education Opportunities
- Support for Volunteer Work
- Growth opportunities - Career Pathing Program!
- The Hagerman Institute - Customized Learning & Development
- Thriving Collaborative Culture
- Generous Employee Referral Bonus
- Paid Parental Leave
- Paid Maternity Leave
This position could be assigned to work on a school project in Indiana. Per Indiana law, certain convictions, offenses, or child welfare interactions may disqualify an individual from working in or around a school setting.
Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status.
Applicants must be currently authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of employment visas at this time.
An Equal Opportunity Employer.