Commercial Operations Manager at Leidos

Description

Leidos Security Enterprise Solutions (SES) helps modernize aviation, ports and borders, and commercial security. Leidos designs and manufactures highly complex security equipment for use at border crossings, airports, seaports, and customer commercial sites.  Our products include Body Scanners, CT baggage scanners, Explosive Trace Detection units, radiation detectors and spectrometers, and Xray scanners for cars, trucks, cargo containers, and trains that are used in Aviation, Ports and Borders and commercial security applications globally.

The Security Enterprise Solutions business is seeking a Commercial Operations Manager to support the Ports & Borders business within the Global Products Division. The ideal candidate will have a demonstrated history of program execution and product delivery into government and commercial environments. The Commercial Operations Manager in this role will have the proven ability to be both customer-focused and operations/execution-minded. He or she will oversee all phases of the Inquiry to Order (ITO) process, including the development of bids and proposals for new equipment sales, to ensure successful customer outcomes while mitigating business risk. The Commercial Operations Manager also has broad oversight of the Order to Remittance (OTR) process to ensure we fulfill all current and future customer commitments. This individual will be a key contributor to our business planning process, with respect to estimating customer demand and partnering with operations to ensure our ability to be agile in our response to new business opportunities. 

We are seeking an experienced business leader who is a critical thinker with a strong business acumen, comfortable navigating complex matrixed environments, and confident in their ability to understand the big picture, set business priorities and drive results through others. 

Primary Responsibilities

• Prioritize and maintain list of active Ports and Borders bids and proposals to ensure broad cross-functional alignment across functional teams and  provide visibility to other key stakeholders.
• Coordinate and champion the bid development effort for new products bids to ensure readiness for bid approval review (BAR) meetings, including ensuring clear understanding of customer requirements, and providing project management and oversight of cross-functional inputs. 
• Build & operate Bid Risk Review sessions to drive early engagement, strategy development and approvals with region & product teams as well as Operations, and supporting functions (legal, finance, tax, EHS, etc), ensuring leadership alignment at all levels to obtain necessary decisions in a timely manner.
• Facilitate cross-functional discussions with international business, tax, export, global mobility and other key stakeholders to define requirements and inform strategies as we enter new markets. 
• Facilitate solutioning sessions with globally dispersed team, including new business development, technical SMEs, commercial operations peers, program managers and other functional leads to ensure the development of clearly-defined, comprehensive and strategic solutions in response to customer inquiries. 
• Work closely with Program Management, Service, Training, Pricing and others to ensure accurate and complete scope has been captured and costed 
• Lead internal pricing discussions based on PTW and business objectives. Spearhead efforts to optimize costing and pricing methodologies to ensure bids are costed as accurately as possible to increase competitiveness and PWin.
• Provide demand inputs into the production forecast based on bid data for operational planning and participate in internal SIOP process to align operations plans with anticipated customer demand while also understanding business financial goals.
• Ensure seamless hand-over of POs/signed contracts through the entire OTR process. 
• Hold cross-functional operations meetings to ensure broad alignment relative to evolving business priorities, and to identify issues, anticipate challenges, develop solutions, and escalate risk to leadership as needed. 
• Continuously challenge current processes and leverage data to drive efficiency, increase profitability and optimize business outcomes, including maintaining data in Salesforce and other systems to help monitor business performance and capture insights to inform future business decisions. 
• Manage a team of bids and proposals professionals and commercial operations support staff 
• Support efforts to drive employee engagement and increase cross-functional alignment across the Ports and Borders business and particularly at the Vista site.

Required Skills and Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree, preferred in related technical field, and 10+ years in program management, operations, or product management roles (additional education, training or experience may be considered in lieu of degree). Masters Degree preferred. 
• Strong business and financial acumen, experience and understanding for financial metrics and P&L management. 
• Experience with forecasting and business operations planning.
• Comfortable and capable of making business decisions with incomplete data and on short timelines. 
• Demonstrated experience successfully managing cross-functional teams in a matrixed business environment. 
• Critical thinkings skills and the ability to anticipate and identify risks and challenges related to execution of programs and business operations. Effective in communicating challenges and potential solutions to leadership. 
• Customer-centric leader with a passion for doing the right thing for the customer and the business. 
• Ability to communicate effectively and present formally to leadership and other audiences.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills are essential.
• Organized, detail oriented, with the ability to manage several projects and competing priorities.
• Previous experience working closely with sales organizations. 
• Excellent knowledge of pricing strategies, pricing levers and competition strategies are essential.
• Self-starter and ability to manage time independently without direct supervision.
• Ability to work flexibly across several different time zones, and occasionally work outside of standard business hours to collaborate with global teams and meet customer deadlines.
• Candidate must be able to obtain Public Trust security clearance (US Citizenship required)

Preferred Qualifications:

• 2+ years of Commercial Capture, Proposal Management, or Program Management in the aviation or customs/borders field. 
• Experience in a manufacturing organization.
   

Original Posting Date:

While subject to change based on business needs, Leidos reasonably anticipates that this job requisition will remain open for at least 3 days with an anticipated close date of no earlier than 3 days after the original posting date as listed above.

Pay Range:

The Leidos pay range for this job level is a general guideline only and not a guarantee of compensation or salary. Additional factors considered in extending an offer include (but are not limited to) responsibilities of the job, education, experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities, as well as internal equity, alignment with market data, applicable bargaining agreement (if any), or other law.