Back to jobs
New

Capture & Close Manager

Washington, D.C. (Remote in Continental U.S. considered)

About Us

Red Cell Partners is an incubation firm building and investing in rapidly scalable technology-led companies that are bringing revolutionary advancements to market in three distinct practice areas: healthcare, cyber, and national security. United by a shared sense of duty and deep belief in the power of innovation, Red Cell is developing powerful tools and solutions to address our Nation’s most pressing problems.

Location: Washington, DC preferred  

National Security / Federal 

Role Overview 

Red Cell Partners is seeking a Capture & Close Manager to turn qualified federal opportunities into winnable bids and executable contracts across our national security portfolio. This role sits at the intersection of capture strategy, pricing, proposal governance, and contract execution. You will partner closely with growth leaders, solution strategists, engineering, finance, legal, and proposal resources to improve win probability and get complex opportunities across the finish line.  

What You’ll Do 

Lead Capture Strategy 

  • Develop and execute capture plans for priority opportunities across the DoW and broader federal market. 
  • Partner with customer-facing teams and growth leaders to gather customer insight, shape requirements, and refine opportunity strategy before solicitation.  
  • Build win themes, discriminators, competitor analysis, and teaming strategies that improve probability of win.  
  • Support bid/no-bid decisions, stage-gate reviews, and pursuit of governance for the highest-priority deals. 

Own Pricing, Commercial Structure, and Deal Close 

  • Partner with finance, legal, and engineering to shape pricing strategy, cost narratives, and contract structures that are competitive, compliant, and executable.  
  • Lead the transition from capture to award by ensuring alignment across customer need, solution approach, pricing, realistic timelines, and contractual path. 
  • Support negotiations and contract finalization in partnership with legal, finance, and executive stakeholders. 
  • Bring discipline to vehicle strategy and closing pathways, including familiarity with FAR-based contracts, OTAs, SBIR/STTR, IDIQs, and other federal acquisition mechanisms. 

Govern Proposal Execution — Don’t Be the Proposal Department 

  • Partner with proposal management and writing support to ensure proposals are compliant, persuasive, and tightly aligned to win strategy. 
  • Provide strategic direction on proposal themes, discriminators, pricing logic, and evaluator-facing narratives, while relying on proposal resources for day-to-day writing, assembly, and submission management. 
  • Participate in storyboarding, color team governance, and major review cycles to ensure each submission reflects the right strategy and commercial posture. 

Build a Repeatable Capture & Close Engine 

  • Create and refine repeatable capture, pricing, and close processes that can scale across multiple portfolio companies. 
  • Establish consistent artifacts, cadences, and reporting for pursuit of reviews, risk tracking, gate decisions, and award readiness. 
  • Help Red Cell improve win probability by making opportunity conversion more disciplined, more commercially grounded, and more scalable across the portfolio. 

How This Role Works with the Team 

This role is designed to complement—not duplicate—the other federal hires. The Head of Growth is responsible for finding and qualifying opportunities and shaping where Red Cell plays. The Solution Strategy & Deployment Director translates customer needs into integrated solution concepts and deployment paths. The Capture & Close Manager works with the contract specialist and proposal writer to convert shaped opportunities into winnable bids and executable contracts. 

What Success Looks Like 

  • Qualified opportunities move into disciplined capture plans with clear win themes, pricing logic, teaming strategy, and contract pathway. 
  • Red Cell submits proposals that are not only compliant, but strategically sharp and commercially credible because capture, pricing, and proposal execution are tightly aligned. 
  • More opportunities progress from shaping to award because Red Cell is better at converting opportunity into executable business. 
  • Red Cell builds a repeatable capture-and-close operating model that lowers the lift on incubation teams and improves portfolio-wide government win rates. 

Who You Are 

  • A senior capture leader who knows how to move complex federal opportunities from qualification to award. Public and internal capture-role materials consistently frame this as the core value of the function. 
  • Strong in strategy and execution: able to shape requirements, develop win themes, structure teaming, and coordinate pricing and contract close. 
  • Comfortable working across technical, customer-facing, legal, finance, and proposal teams to drive outcomes in ambiguous, fast-moving environments. 
  • Detail-oriented and operationally disciplined but focused on improving win probability and getting deals closed—not just managing document production. 

Qualifications 

  • 8+ years of experience in capture management, contracts, proposal strategy, or business development within defense, aerospace, or national security markets. Internal and adjacent role drafts typically describe this experience band for federal growth/capture roles. 
  • Proven experience leading or materially shaping full-lifecycle federal pursuits from capture through award. 
  • Strong understanding of DoD and federal acquisition pathways, including FAR/DFARS; familiarity with OTAs, SBIR/STTR, IDIQs, and related vehicles strongly preferred. 
  • Experience building win themes, competitor analysis, teaming strategies, pricing approaches, and governance. 
  • Ability to translate complex technical capabilities into compelling pursuit strategy and evaluator-facing value propositions. 
  • Experience partnering closely with proposal-management resources rather than having to personally own every aspect of proposal production. 
  • Active U.S. security clearance preferred; ability and willingness to obtain one required. 

Location & Travel 

  • Washington, DC metro area preferred. 
  • Some travel required for customer engagement, partner coordination, and cross-functional work. 

 

Salary Range: $150,000-$200,000. This represents the typical salary range for this position based on experience, skills, and other factors. 

Our Red Cell Partners Benefits:

For full-time roles

  • Career track opportunity with potential for rapid advancement with strong performance as the firm grows 
  • 100% employer paid, comprehensive health care including medical, dental, and vision for you and your family.
  • Paid maternity and paternity for 14 weeks at employees' normal pay.
  • Unlimited PTO, with management approval.
  • Opportunities for professional development and continued learning.
  • Optional 401K, FSA, and equity incentives available.
  • Mental health benefits are available through Tara Mind. 
  • Cost effective GLP-1 solutions available through Crux. 

We’re an Equal Opportunity Employer: You’ll receive consideration for employment without regard to race, sex, color, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, or on the basis of disability.

Applicant Data Disclosure   

By submitting an application, you acknowledge that Red Cell Partners, LLC ("Red Cell") uses third-party service providers to facilitate its recruitment and hiring processes. These providers include applicant tracking systems, candidate verification platforms, and fraud detection tools (collectively, "Hiring Platforms"). Your application materials, including your résumé, cover letter, work samples, responses to application questions, and any other information you submit, may be transmitted to and processed by these Hiring Platforms for the following purposes:  

  • Managing and administering your application throughout the hiring process; 
  • Verifying the accuracy and authenticity of application materials, including by cross-referencing information you provide against publicly available sources and proprietary databases; 
  • Identifying indicators of potentially fraudulent, fabricated, or materially misleading application content, including but not limited to discrepancies between submitted materials and publicly available professional profiles, geographic anomalies, and fabricated work histories. 

Applications that are flagged through this process as containing indicators of fraud or material misrepresentation may be declined from further consideration. If you have questions about the status of your application or the evaluation process, please contact talent@redcellpartners.com.  

Red Cell requires its Hiring Platform providers to process your information solely for the purposes described above and in accordance with applicable law. Your information will be retained only for as long as necessary to fulfill these purposes and any applicable legal obligations, after which it will be deleted in accordance with Red Cell's data retention policies.

For more information about how your data is used, please refer to our Privacy Policy and Applicant Privacy Notice.  

Create a Job Alert

Interested in building your career at Red Cell Partners? Get future opportunities sent straight to your email.

Apply for this job

*

indicates a required field

Resume/CV*

Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf

Cover Letter

Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf

Select...
Select...

Voluntary Self-Identification

For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file.

As set forth in Red Cell Partners’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

Select...
Select...
Race & Ethnicity Definitions

If you believe you belong to any of the categories of protected veterans listed below, please indicate by making the appropriate selection. As a government contractor subject to the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA), we request this information in order to measure the effectiveness of the outreach and positive recruitment efforts we undertake pursuant to VEVRAA. Classification of protected categories is as follows:

A "disabled veteran" is one of the following: a veteran of the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service who is entitled to compensation (or who but for the receipt of military retired pay would be entitled to compensation) under laws administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs; or a person who was discharged or released from active duty because of a service-connected disability.

A "recently separated veteran" means any veteran during the three-year period beginning on the date of such veteran's discharge or release from active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval, or air service.

An "active duty wartime or campaign badge veteran" means a veteran who served on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service during a war, or in a campaign or expedition for which a campaign badge has been authorized under the laws administered by the Department of Defense.

An "Armed forces service medal veteran" means a veteran who, while serving on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service, participated in a United States military operation for which an Armed Forces service medal was awarded pursuant to Executive Order 12985.

Select...

Voluntary Self-Identification of Disability

Form CC-305
Page 1 of 1
OMB Control Number 1250-0005
Expires 04/30/2026

Why are you being asked to complete this form?

We are a federal contractor or subcontractor. The law requires us to provide equal employment opportunity to qualified people with disabilities. We have a goal of having at least 7% of our workers as people with disabilities. The law says we must measure our progress towards this goal. To do this, we must ask applicants and employees if they have a disability or have ever had one. People can become disabled, so we need to ask this question at least every five years.

Completing this form is voluntary, and we hope that you will choose to do so. Your answer is confidential. No one who makes hiring decisions will see it. Your decision to complete the form and your answer will not harm you in any way. If you want to learn more about the law or this form, visit the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) website at www.dol.gov/ofccp.

How do you know if you have a disability?

A disability is a condition that substantially limits one or more of your “major life activities.” If you have or have ever had such a condition, you are a person with a disability. Disabilities include, but are not limited to:

  • Alcohol or other substance use disorder (not currently using drugs illegally)
  • Autoimmune disorder, for example, lupus, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, HIV/AIDS
  • Blind or low vision
  • Cancer (past or present)
  • Cardiovascular or heart disease
  • Celiac disease
  • Cerebral palsy
  • Deaf or serious difficulty hearing
  • Diabetes
  • Disfigurement, for example, disfigurement caused by burns, wounds, accidents, or congenital disorders
  • Epilepsy or other seizure disorder
  • Gastrointestinal disorders, for example, Crohn's Disease, irritable bowel syndrome
  • Intellectual or developmental disability
  • Mental health conditions, for example, depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, schizophrenia, PTSD
  • Missing limbs or partially missing limbs
  • Mobility impairment, benefiting from the use of a wheelchair, scooter, walker, leg brace(s) and/or other supports
  • Nervous system condition, for example, migraine headaches, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis (MS)
  • Neurodivergence, for example, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder, dyslexia, dyspraxia, other learning disabilities
  • Partial or complete paralysis (any cause)
  • Pulmonary or respiratory conditions, for example, tuberculosis, asthma, emphysema
  • Short stature (dwarfism)
  • Traumatic brain injury
Select...

PUBLIC BURDEN STATEMENT: According to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 no persons are required to respond to a collection of information unless such collection displays a valid OMB control number. This survey should take about 5 minutes to complete.