Description

Who we are
Poseidon Aerospace is a venture-backed company building unmanned cargo aircraft for commercial and military logistics. Our platforms—Heron, an unmanned seaplane, and Egret, an unmanned STOL aircraft—are both targeting flight test in summer 2026. 

About the role
We are seeking a Proposal Lead who will own the development of government proposals that win new defense programs and sustain our contracting posture. You will lead the creation of clear, compliant, and technically accurate responses to DoD and other U.S. Government solicitations—RFPs, RFIs, BAAs, OTAs, and SBIRs—by translating engineering and flight operations inputs into persuasive, evaluation-aligned narratives.

In addition to proposal authorship, you will manage key compliance functions that underpin government contracting. Your work is central to how Poseidon presents its technology to government customers and how we secure the programs that fund development, testing, and fielding.

Your center of gravity is producing high-quality, on-time government proposals that are compliant, compelling, and technically credible.

What you’ll do:

Own proposal responses end-to-end across RFPs, RFIs, BAAs, SBIRs, and OTAs as primary author, project manager, and final set of eyes before submission

Partner directly with engineering, autonomy, avionics, test, and flight operations to extract technical content and turn it into clear, specific narrative

Produce white papers, quad charts, and concept briefs that reach government customers before a solicitation drops and shape how they understand what Poseidon is building

Run color team reviews, manage schedules, and deliver compliant packages on time with a small team and no inherited process

Build the proposal function from scratch: writing schedules, content workflows, reusable libraries, and documentation standards that scale with the company

Requirements

Required 

Experience personally leading proposal submissions across multiple government contracting efforts, from RFP release through delivery

Strong technical writing skills: you can translate complex engineering into clear, specific narrative without genericizing it

Working knowledge of FAR/DFARS and proposal compliance requirements

Experience developing compliance matrices, managing submission schedules, and owning document configuration

Technical literacy in aerospace, autonomy, aviation, or adjacent engineering domains

US citizenship and eligibility for TS/SCI

Ideally you have

Experience with non-standard contracting vehicles such as OTA, SBIR, fixed-price, or anything outside routine cost-plus fixed fee

6–8 years in contracting or proposals, ideally at a prime or large government contractor

Written proposals where the contracting structure itself was part of the problem to solve, not just the narrative

Worked in or alongside a fast-moving team under unusual time pressure

Built proposal infrastructure from scratch rather than inheriting a mature process

Active TS/SCI clearance