Strong Middle-Senior PM (Presale and Delivery)

The Senior Project Manager (Presale) owns the delivery side of the presale cycle, turns a client request, RFP or tender into a realistic, defensible and profitable delivery offer: scope, estimate, timeline, team, commercial model and risks.

The main goal is to prepare proposal to win deals that the company can actually deliver on time and within budget, especially under Fixed Price and Fixed Schedule models. The role covers opportunities from small teams (2–5 people, 1–3 months) to large enterprise programs (20+ people, 12+ months), several in parallel.

The Senior PM (Presale) is also the quality gate for proposals prepared by other Project Managers.

Responsibilities

Presale & client engagement
• Drive the delivery part of presales from opportunity creation to contract signature: gather the team, define proposal vison, milestones and responsibilities.
• Analyze RFI/RFP/tender documentation: requirements, evaluation criteria, compliance matrix, mandatory templates and deadlines.
• Facilitate discovery and scoping workshops: clarify goals, constraints, assumptions and acceptance criteria.
• Build and present the delivery approach independently: methodology, phases, milestones, team, governance, communication plan.
• Prepare a professional Q&A lists for clients and tender committees; defend the offer at client presentations and orals.

Estimation & planning

• Run estimation across all competencies (FE, BE, Mobile, QA, DevOps, BA, Design, PM) and turn it into a client-ready artifact.
• Apply and choose the right estimation framework for the case: WBS-based bottom-up, three-point / PERT, analogous, parametric, story points, function points, T-shirt sizing for early ROM.
• Use historical data from delivered projects to validate estimates; keep estimation accuracy within ±20%.
• Build timelines and roadmaps with dependencies, critical path, milestones and buffers; model scenarios (MVP vs full scope, team size vs duration).
• Define team composition, ramp-up/ramp-down and resource loading; align it with real capacity of the delivery units.

Fixed Price / Fixed Schedule deals

• Select the commercial model (FP, FS, T&M, capped T&M, hybrid / phased) and justify it to Delivery Director, Sales and management.
• For FP/FS: fix scope boundaries, out-of-scope list, assumptions, dependencies on the client, acceptance procedure and change control mechanism.
• Calculate contingency and management reserve based on the risk register, not as a flat percentage.
• Anticipate overpromising risks and stop commitments the company cannot deliver.

Proposal & tender review

• Review proposals, estimates and tender responses prepared by other PMs before they go to the client.
• Check completeness of scope, WBS logic, estimate consistency, timeline realism, team fit, risks, assumptions and commercial terms.
• Give structured feedback and approve, return for rework or escalate.
• Maintain presale templates, checklists and the estimation playbook; share lessons learned from won and lost deals.

SOW & contracting

• Prepare and review Statements of Work: scope, deliverables, milestones, acceptance criteria, payment schedule, roles and responsibilities, change request procedure, SLAs.
• Ensure a clean handover of the won deal to the delivery team: baseline scope, estimate, plan, risks and client expectations.

Reporting to top management

• Report presale pipeline status to the Head of Delivery, Delivery Director and C-level: stage, win probability, deadlines, required resources, key risks.
• Prepare go / no-go and bid / no-bid recommendations with business rationale.
• Present deal economics and delivery risks for approval of large and FP/FS deals.
• Track and report win rate, estimation accuracy and presale-to-delivery deviations.

Portfolio of proposals

• Lead several proposals in parallel (typically 3–6 active opportunities of different size).
• Prioritize by deadline, deal value and win probability; plan the involvement of architects, BAs and engineers.
• Keep all presale artifacts in the CRM and shared repository up to date.

Qualification

• 7+ years as a Project Manager in IT outsourcing / software services, of them 2+ years with regular presale or bid involvement.
• Proven track record of proposals and tenders for international clients, including enterprise and public tenders (RFP/RFQ), for teams from 2–5 to 20+ people.
• Hands-on experience delivering Fixed Price and Fixed Schedule projects end-to-end, including change control and acceptance.
• Experience reporting to C-level and presenting deal economics and risks.
• Strong knowledge of Waterfall, Agile (Scrum/Kanban) and hybrid delivery models.