Senior Bid Manager, Advanced Manufacturing

Responsibilities

• Lead RFQ/RFP response from initial customer inquiry through technical feasibility assessment, cost estimation, risk evaluation, scheduling, and final proposal delivery.
• Build repeatable bidding systems
• Establish structured workflows for cost estimating, technical feasibility reviews, and bid/no-bid decision frameworks that scale as the business grows.

Drive cost estimation and pricing discipline

• Develop accurate cost and price models for complex additively manufactured parts, integrating material, labor, equipment utilization, post-processing, and risk factors.
• Evaluate customer designs for manufacturability, identify geometric limitations, material property requirements, and post-processing needs, and work with engineering to develop alternative approaches or qualification plans when customer requirements push capability boundaries.
• Support the entire sales cycle
• Partner with Business Development Managers on customer meetings, technical presentations, and contract negotiations as the technical credibility anchor.

Preferred

• Defense or aerospace contract manufacturing background
• including experience with CUI, DFARS, ITAR, AS9100, or selling into primes and government customers
• Early-stage or startup manufacturing experience
• where you built bidding/estimating processes rather than inherited them in resource-constrained, high-growth environments

About the Team

Horizon Manufacturing Technologies is Relativity’s externally facing advanced manufacturing business, leveraging cutting-edge advanced manufacturing capabilities to solve critical supply chain challenges across the US industrial base. The business is pioneering convergent manufacturing – integrating large-scale additive, subtractive, and inspection through an autonomous platform to unlock the next generation of design freedom and manufacturing capability. This is an environment where cutting-edge R&D is put into production, industrializing advanced manufacturing capabilities to solve customer problems. You’ll work alongside welders, robotics engineers, data scientists, and systems engineers at the intersection of hardware and software, creating an end-to-end convergent manufacturing platform that serves customers across aerospace, defense, marine, energy, and nuclear sectors.

About the Role

• Own the end-to-end bid process
• Serve as technical-commercial translator

About You

5+ years in technical bidding, sales engineering, or application engineering within contract manufacturing, additive manufacturing, metal fabrication, or job shop environments.

Strong technical foundation with hands-on manufacturing knowledge

You can interpret complex engineering documents, understand metal manufacturing processes (welding, machining, heat treatment, post-processing), assess DFM (design for manufacturing) considerations, and translate customer requirements into internal technical requirements to enable accurate quoting.

Structured process builder and excellent communicator

You build systems (templates, workflows, qualification criteria) that make bidding repeatable, and you can present confidently to executives, engineers, and procurement teams.

Cross-functional orchestrator

You drive alignment across engineering, operations, and commercial teams without formal authority, balancing technical feasibility, competitive pricing, and realistic schedules

Scrappy and entrepreneurial

You’re comfortable with ambiguity, willing to wear multiple hats, and energized by building something new rather than managing an existing process.

Nice to haves but not required

Experience in Wire Arc Direct Energy Deposition (DED) or large-scale additive manufacturing with metal 3D printing technologies

Manufacturing engineering, welding, or metallurgy background with hands-on fabrication experience that informs cost and feasibility assessments

At Relativity Space, we are committed to transparency and fairness in our compensation practices. Actual compensation will be determined based on experience, qualifications, and other job-related factors.

Compensation is only one part of our total rewards package. Relativity Space offers competitive salary and equity, a generous PTO and sick leave policy, parental leave, an annual learning and development stipend, and more! To see some of the benefits & perks we offer, please visit here.

Hiring Range

$122,000

$182,000 USD

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

If you need a reasonable accommodation, please contact us at [email protected]

Please note: Relativity Space does not accept unsolicited resumes, candidate profiles, or referrals from recruitment agencies or search firms. Any unsolicited submission - via email, our website, social media, or directly to an employee - will be deemed the property of Relativity Space, and no fee will be owed absent a current, fully executed agreement with Talent Acquisition that specifically authorizes submissions for the applicable role.