Are you an experienced manager with outstanding communication skills and a passion for leading high-performing teams in a global environment? Are you looking to expand your commercial expertise while playing a key leadership role in driving the success of Evotec? This could be the opportunity for you.
Evotec is seeking a Director, Head of Discovery Proposal to join the Proposal team within Commercial Operations. In this leadership role, you will report to the Vice President, Head of Proposal and be responsible for managing and mentoring a globally distributed team, while supporting the broader Commercial organization in a collaborative and high-impact environment.
Responsibilities:
The Proposal team is a critical function within Evotec. The successful candidate will lead and develop the Discovery Proposal team, ensuring delivery of high-quality, competitive proposals through strong cross-functional collaboration with Sales, Operations, Finance, Legal, and other stakeholders.
A core focus of this role is people leadership in a global, remote setting, ensuring team engagement, performance, and continuous development.
Additionally, this role actively contributes to shaping and improving proposal processes, with a strong focus on optimising workflows, accelerating proposal turnaround times, enhancing operational efficiency, and increasing overall proposal win rate through datadriven improvements.
A key part of the role also includes ensuring proposals effectively address client needs, reflect strategic positioning, and support successful client engagement.
Mission:
1. Serve as a senior leader and key point of contact for the internal sales process (including proposal strategy, template selection, pricing, and CRM tracking)
2. Lead, manage, and develop a global, fully remote team, fostering a high-performance and accountable culture
3. Effectively allocate and prioritise workload across the team, ensuring efficiency and balance
4. Drive systematic process optimisation across the proposal lifecycle, identifying bottlenecks and implementing improvements that increase speed, consistency, and quality
5. Introduce scalable workflows, automation, and standardisation to reduce cycle time and increase throughput without compromising accuracy
6. Partner closely with Sales and Operations leadership, as well as cross-functional teams (Finance, Legal, Project Management), to drive alignment and improvements
7. Collaborate closely with client-facing teams and support Sales in client discussions to ensure proposals align with client expectations, including presenting bids, articulating proposal rationale, and contributing to client meetings as needed.
8. Define, implement, and monitor KPIs, leveraging CRM tools to track efficiency metrics (turnaround time and win rates indicators) and continuously improve outcomes
Key Competencies and Characteristics:
9. Proven leadership and management experience, particularly with high-performing and remote teams
10. Demonstrated ability to lead, coach, and develop individuals in remote working dynamics, including acting as a tutor and subject matter guide
11. Strong organisational skills with the ability to manage complex, distributed workloads
12. Solid understanding of the sales and proposal process
13. Strong client orientation, with the ability to understand and translate client needs into compelling, customised proposal content
14. Demonstrated experience implementing process improvements with measurable impact on speed, efficiency, and proposal success
15. Strong interpersonal skills with a passion for people development and cross-functional collaboration
Skills and Abilities:
16. Great communication skills, written and oral
17. Excellent English
18. Demonstrated ability to lead in a remote, international environment
19. Customer oriented with an appetite for getting involved in the commercial side of science
20. Knowledge of the drug discovery processes
21. Experience in proposal and quote preparation (preferable)
22. Experience engaging with clients, supporting bid presentations, or contributing to client facing discussions is a plus
23. Self-motivated, independent, enthusiastic, collaborative, reliable, able to multi-task with fine attention to details and a strong work ethic
24. Strong people leadership and coaching mindset
25. Willingness and desire to learn; open to change
26. Excellent organizational and time management skills
27. Excellent IT skills (to include Word, PowerPoint and Excel)
Qualifications:
28. Minimum BSc, MSc in a Life Sciences discipline
29. Preference for >5 years experience in the sales process in the Life Science business
FR : Dans le cadre de sa politique Diversité, Evotec étudie, à compétences égales, toutes les candidatures dont celles des personnes en situation de handicap.
ENG : In the frame of our Diversity policy, Evotec considers, with equal competences, all applications including people with disabilities.