Program Manager, Pre Sales & Bids

What makes this role exciting and challenging:
The Program Manager, Pre-Sales & Bids, reporting to the Director of Delivery, will play a pivotal role in shaping and executing pre-sales strategies, leading bid management, and enhancing governance processes for Allwyn Lottery Solutions (AWLS). This role blends strategic program management, opportunity assessment, and technical bid leadership with cross-functional collaboration, ensuring that AWLS is well-positioned to secure new opportunities and drive business growth.

You will be at the forefront of evaluating and prioritising new business opportunities, establishing structured governance frameworks, and aligning commercial and technology teams to ensure that strategic initiatives are well-defined before commitments are made. Your work will directly impact AWLS’s market positioning, ensuring that bids, pre-sales efforts, and strategic initiatives are competitive, innovative, and aligned with business priorities.

This role offers the opportunity to work with cutting-edge technologies in a dynamic, evolving industry, where your contributions will directly shape Allwyn’s future success. You will thrive in a collaborative environment that values innovation, creativity, and strategic thinking, ensuring that AWLS continues to deliver high-quality, market-leading solutions.

As part of this role, you will engage with stakeholders across multiple regions, requiring regular international travel to support pre-sales discussions, bid facilitation, and strategic collaboration with AWLS’s global partners.

This position requires exceptional organizational skills, attention to detail, and the ability to manage complex bid and pre-sales processes, ensuring that all efforts align with business priorities, client requirements, and strategic growth objectives.

Key Responsibilities

Bid Management and Development:

• Oversee the complete bid lifecycle from Allwyn Lottery Solutions (AWLS) to support Allwyn North America (AWNA), ensuring on-time, high-quality delivery of bids.
• Lead the creation and development of compelling, customer-focused content, ensuring alignment with AWNA’s requirements and broader organizational strategy.
• Design and implement structured governance for prioritising and managing bids, ensuring clear timelines, roles, and accountability across internal teams and stakeholders.
• Collaborate with AWLS commercial teams to assess feasibility, ensuring technology alignment before commitments are made.
• Write, edit, and coordinate technical and commercial content, including executive summaries, proposals, and supporting documentation, ensuring consistency and strategic messaging.

Pre-Sales Management:

• Support AWLS commercial teams in assessing and prioritising new business opportunities, strategic partnerships, and product expansion based on strategic, technological, and commercial value.
• Establish structured governance to evaluate feasibility, technology alignment, and resource impact before commitments are made.
• Provide guidance on when to accelerate initiatives based on business impact, ensuring a balanced approach between opportunity pursuit and delivery capacity.
• Support pre-sales discussions, ensuring clarity on AWLS capabilities, roadmap alignment, and strategic positioning.
• Facilitate a seamless transition from pre-sales to delivery, ensuring alignment on scope, timelines, and expectations while minimising friction.
• Maintain a pipeline of pre-sales initiatives, tracking status, resource implications, and potential business impact.

Governance and Process Management:

• Identify and mitigate risks that may impact bid delivery and pre-sales initiatives, such as resource availability, content gaps, or conflicting priorities.
• Establish a structured governance process to assess and prioritise new business opportunities based on strategic and commercial value.
• Continuously refine bid and pre-sales processes, workflows, and templates to improve efficiency and ensure alignment with business priorities.
• Ensure all proposals and pre-sales commitments comply with RFP/RFI requirements, internal standards, and regulatory guidelines.
• Maintain a repository of pre-sales materials, proposal templates, and best practices to enhance consistency and effectiveness.
• Monitor and report on bid and pre-sales status, progress, and outcomes, providing insights to senior management for informed decision-making.

Leadership, Governance & Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner with internal teams, including Product, Engineering, Finance, and Commercial, to gather input, validate solutions, and ensure alignment on key initiatives.
• Facilitate strategic discussions and planning sessions to align teams on priorities, challenges, and opportunities.
• Work closely with senior leadership to provide clear, structured insights that support decision-making and drive business objectives.
• Act as a key interface between AWLS and AWNA, ensuring effective coordination, timely communication, and structured governance across all initiatives.
• Lead steering committees, providing clear, structured, and aligned updates to stakeholders, ensuring transparency and decision-making efficiency.
• Build and maintain strong relationships with customers, fostering trust, collaboration, and long-term engagement.
• Engage third-party vendors and partners, where necessary, to enhance solutions and drive innovation.

Content Quality & Compliance:

• Ensure all proposals and documentation meet specified requirements, RFP/RFI instructions, and internal quality standards.
• Manage compliance with bid timelines, formatting, legal, and regulatory requirements, ensuring that our contributions are accurate, well-structured, and add clear value to the overall submission.
• Develop and maintain structured templates, content libraries, and best practices to enhance efficiency and consistency across bid preparation, pre-sales discussions, and strategic communications.
• Ensure high-quality standards across all deliverables, including proposals, reports, and other business-critical documentation.
• Implement continuous improvement processes to enhance clarity, accuracy, and effectiveness in reporting, proposals, and stakeholder communications.

Market Intelligence & Strategic Insights:

• Continuously track and analyse lottery industry trends, client needs, and competitive offerings to ensure the company’s bids, pre-sales efforts, and strategic initiatives remain innovative and market-competitive.
• Provide actionable insights and feedback to Product and Strategy teams on emerging client requirements, market opportunities, and areas for product evolution.
• Collaborate with internal teams to translate market intelligence into strategic recommendations that support business growth and competitive differentiation.

Minimum Experience & Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Business Administration, Communications, Technical Writing, Project Management, or a related field
• 6+ years of experience in bid writing, proposal management, or program management roles, preferably within the lottery, gaming, or technology sectors, with exposure to pre-sales, opportunity assessment, or strategic partnerships
• Proven experience managing large, complex bids, including RFPs, RFIs, and tender responses for global or public sector clients
• Strong background in content development, strategic messaging, and storytelling, with the ability to craft compelling proposals and business cases.
• Extensive experience in project management, handling multiple concurrent initiatives under tight deadlines.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) and proposal management tools.
• Excellent written and spoken communication skills in English.

Required Competences:

• Facilitate decision-making by ensuring alignment between commercial and technical leadership, providing structured insights and enabling informed discussions.
• Navigate complex challenges effectively, maintaining calmness and clarity under pressure while ensuring productive collaboration across teams.
• Build and maintain strong, professional relationships with internal and external stakeholders, fostering trust and open communication.
• Respect diverse perspectives, ensuring discussions are constructive, inclusive, and focused on achieving the best outcomes.
• Support strategic discussions by bridging technology and commercial perspectives, ensuring structured evaluation of business opportunities.
• Develop win strategies and craft compelling narratives that help shape solutions and resonate with clients.
• Strong analytical skills, with the ability to interpret technical and commercial information into clear, structured recommendations.
• High attention to detail, with a proactive, organized, and results-driven approach.
• Excellent organizational and time management skills, ensuring efficient handling of multiple priorities.
• High integrity and discretion, with the ability to manage sensitive & confidential information.