About By the Pixel

By the Pixel is an established digital agency headquartered in Denver, Colorado, with remote team members across the U.S. Since 2010, we've designed and built digital platforms, AI-powered products, and custom websites for clients in healthcare, automotive sales, research and development, hospitality, the nonprofit sector, and more. We pride ourselves on consulting and collaborating directly with our clients, devising strategies, and identifying opportunities to achieve their business goals and deliver real value.

How this role fits

The Proposal & Business Development Manager's primary goal is to grow the business. Nearly all of our work has come from referrals and repeat clients, and we want a steady pipeline of new opportunities alongside that, in addition to proposals that consistently win and, over time, a foothold in public-sector work.

This is a new role at By the Pixel, so you'll have a chance to shape it. You will help us find the best opportunities to go after, define our decision criteria, and establish processes for our sales pipeline and proposal creation. You will own finding the opportunities, strategizing how to grow the business, and writing quality proposals that help win work.

What you'll own

Writing Proposals

• Writes and produces proposals that the agency sends, whether it came from an RFP or from an Account Manager.
• Takes an Account Manager's brief on their client, meaning what the client wants, their budget, and their constraints, and turns it into a finished draft. Hands it back with the pricing story, the assumptions, and anything deliberately left out of scope, for the Account Manager to review and deliver.
• Runs the whole process on formal RFPs: kickoff, a checklist of requirements the buyer asked for, the outline, who writes what, internal deadlines, assembly, and submitting on time.
• Writes the standard sections directly, including company background, team bios, case studies, and descriptions of past work, and pulls the scope, technical, and pricing sections out of Project Managers, department leads, and founders.
• Relies on the Project Manager and department leads to get the effort estimate right, and on the Account Manager to judge whether the price will land with the client and still make money. Owns getting both into the document on time.
• Checks and verifies all proposals before they go out. This includes validating that all questions are answered, all instructions are followed, and all of the client’s concerns and requirements are addressed.
• Submits through whatever channel the buyer requires, exactly as instructed, early enough that a portal problem does not cost the agency the bid.
• Tells leadership early when a proposal is in trouble, whether that is a contributor falling behind, an impossible deadline, or a requirement the agency cannot meet.

Finding & Qualifying Opportunities

• Checks the RFP sources daily: SAM.gov, HigherGov, BidNet, state and local portals, and the commercial and institutional aggregators.
• Owns the procurement inbox, replying promptly and passing anything about a relationship or a contract to the right Account Manager or founder.
• Decides whether each opportunity is worth pursuing using the agency's bid/no-bid criteria (fit, capacity, competitiveness, margin, strategic value), and writes down the reasoning either way.
• Reads the terms and conditions before recommending a pursuit and flags anything the agency cannot meet or should not accept, including insurance and bonding requirements, liability terms, security obligations, and payment terms.
• Brings the worthwhile ones to leadership with a recommendation. Leadership makes the call on whether to bid.
• Names a relationship owner, an Account Manager or a founder, when a pursuit opens, so every one has both a document owner and a relationship owner. On a win, that person becomes the account's Account Manager.
• Keeps the pipeline current in a CRM: every opportunity with its source, stage, value, deadline, and next step, so reporting is accurate.
• Watches for amendments, question deadlines, pre-bid meetings, and changes to what the buyer wants, and gets them in front of the team.

Growing the Business

• Works with leadership to seek out and evaluate new sales opportunities, bringing the research on the market, the buyer, and who else is competing.
• Finds and tests new sources of work beyond the RFP portals, including industry associations, cooperative purchasing programs, and partner and referral channels, and reports back on which ones actually produce.
• Researches the industries where the agency's work fits best and builds a list of the organizations, buying cycles, and decision-makers worth getting in front of.
• Represents the agency at conferences, industry events, and networking mixers, which involves some travel. Follows up on every contact and says which events and memberships are worth the money.
• Builds a network in those markets, including other agencies to partner with on larger bids.
• Brings back what they learn: what buyers are asking for, how competitors are positioning, and where the agency has a gap.

The Proposal Library

• Builds and maintains a content library of everything that gets written: boilerplate, case studies, references, resumes, the capability statement, and write-ups of past work. Adds to it after every proposal, so the next one does not start from a blank page.
• Keeps the capability statement, rate positioning, and differentiator language current and version-controlled in Google Drive.
• Maintains the proposal templates and writes down how the process works.

Tracking What Works

• Logs every outcome and the details, won or lost. Asks for a debrief whenever the buyer offers one.
• Reports to leadership on a regular cadence: how many proposals went out, the win rate, what the pipeline is worth, and which sources and opportunity types are actually converting.
• Uses what the losses teach to fix the bid/no-bid criteria, the library, and the process.

Public Sector Groundwork

• Owns the agency's SAM.gov profile and related registrations.
  Registers the agency with prime contractors and keeps those profiles current, focusing on mid-size primes where the agency fills a real gap.
• Manages the relationship with the agency's APEX Accelerator advisor and supports outreach to primes' small-business offices, with research, materials, and follow-through.
• Pursues certifications end-to-end, including state small business certifications and any diversity certifications the agency qualifies for.
• Feeds teaming and subcontracting opportunities from those relationships into the pipeline like any other lead.
• Gets up to speed on how public sector buying works using the APEX advisor and industry resources rather than waiting to be trained.

Working with the Team

• Briefs the team at kickoff on the opportunity, the buyer, what the agency is being scored on, and the plan to win, and stays available while people write.
• Meets with Account Managers regularly to review what proposals are coming on their accounts, when, and what each will need.
• Handles what comes after submission of formal bids with the Account Manager or a founder leading any client-facing work.
• Gives Project Managers, Managers, and leadership as much warning as possible when a pursuit looks likely to convert, brings the pipeline view to capacity planning, and confirms the agency can actually staff the work before committing to a bid.
• When deadlines stack up, work with the team to determine who does what and when.
• Keeps pursuit history, submitted proposals, debrief notes, and pricing precedent in a CRM and Google Drive so someone else could pick up the pipeline, and leads the handoff when that happens.

What success looks like

• 90 days: The backlog is triaged, every source that matters is monitored, the pipeline lives in the CRM, proposals are going out through a repeatable process, and you have a plan on how to grow the business for the coming year.
• Year one: Execute on growth plan, a steady flow of qualified submissions, our first RFP-sourced wins, a network and a set of pipeline sources that didn't exist before, and reporting that tells us what's working and what isn't. On the public sector side, progress shows up as registrations and relationships rather than revenue.

Who thrives in this role

• You like ownership. This function is still taking shape, and you'll be the one to build it out, with plenty of support.
• You think outside of the box and are willing to try new things.
• You're comfortable with deadlines, checklists, and requirement lists, and you like keeping them in order.
• You write clearly and quickly, and you enjoy turning a discovery brief or a founder's rough notes into a clean, persuasive proposal.
• You have good judgment about fit, and you're comfortable saying "this one isn't for us" and explaining why.
• You're comfortable representing us, whether that's on a conference floor, at an industry event, or in a first conversation with a prime contractor.
• You work well as a hub. You'll bring Account Managers, Project Managers, department leads, and founders together on every proposal, coordinating people you don't manage.

This role might NOT be the right fit if

• You're looking for a commission-driven sales role. There's no quota here, and once a client is ours the relationship belongs to an Account Manager.
• You'd rather step into a process that's already built.
• You want to focus on one thing. This role moves between writing, researching, and getting out in front of people, sometimes on the same day.

Growth path

As the pipeline matures, this role can grow toward capture management, owning win strategy, teaming relationships, and positioning before an RFP is published, or toward leading a small business development and proposals team.

Required qualifications

• You've owned complete, competitive RFP or RFQ responses, from reading the solicitation through compliant, on-time submission.
• 5 to 8 years across proposal work and business development. Proposal management, capture, grants management, bid and tender work, and agency new business all count.
• You write clean, persuasive business prose quickly, and you're comfortable editing several contributors into one voice.
• You've run multi-contributor deliverables against hard external deadlines.
• You've researched a market and built a target list, and you're comfortable representing a company at industry events.
  You're comfortable in a CRM and standard document tooling, and you document as you go.

Strongly preferred

• Government procurement experience: SAM.gov, state and local portals, public sector RFPs, or work with primes and their small business offices.
• Familiarity with the technology industry and terminology.

Nice to have

• Formal proposal training: APMP certification, Shipley methodology, or a grant-writing background.
• An agency or professional services background. You understand billable work, scoping, and how creative and technical teams estimate.
• Requirements or compliance tracking experience from any regulated field: legal, healthcare, construction bidding, or government grants.
• Working knowledge of capture concepts: teaming, win themes, price-to-win, and debriefs.

Location and travel

Remote, anywhere in the U.S. Expect occasional travel for conferences, industry events, and pre-bid meetings.

What we can offer you

• Fully remote position
• Competitive base salary
• Culture of learning and collaboration
• Flexible schedule
• Company-provided MacBook
• Health, dental & vision benefits
• 401(k) account and a company contribution of 3% of your salary
• Paid vacation
• Paid holidays
• Parental leave
• Professional development budget
• Bonus pay

Compensation

$90,000-$130,000/year

At By the Pixel, we like to take on challenges and tackle big problems together. As a fully remote team, we acknowledge the importance of a flexible schedule to accommodate time zones and life outside of work, as long as the work gets done to our standard and in a reasonable amount of time. We are a welcoming and supportive team and a place for people to grow and build inspiring careers. We value supporting our employees on and off the clock, so as a By the Pixel employee, you’ll enjoy a generous benefits package.