As our Senior Commercial Manager, you’ll sit at the heart of complex bids and live delivery, balancing risk, margin and pace. You’ll bring sharp commercial judgement to scenario planning and resource modelling, translate policy into pragmatic choices, and ensure contractual compliance from bid through to service. Whether advising leaders or coaching the team, your decisions will directly influence profitability and strengthen the commercial integrity of everything we deliver. We’re a people‑first organisation, recognised in the UK’s Best Workplaces, where great work and purpose go hand in hand. The role is hybrid, ideally based in the South East with some travel to Portsmouth and London.
Responsibilities
- Lead all commercial, contractual and supplier management activities across a complex portfolio, ensuring full compliance with Sopra Steria’s commercial frameworks and driving commercially sound decision-making.
- Shape, assure and influence major bids and proposals, working with sales, delivery and finance to qualify opportunities, design commercial models, negotiate terms and protect margin.
- Build and maintain strong client relationships, representing the commercial function in governance forums, resolving issues swiftly and identifying opportunities to improve profitability and mitigate contractual or commercial risk.
- Oversee contract performance and service delivery alignment, ensuring obligations, service levels and commercial controls are met while driving continuous improvement and maintaining high client satisfaction.
- Proactively identify, assess and manage commercial and operational risks across bids and live contracts, implementing practical mitigation plans to minimise exposure to disputes, claims or financial loss.
- Lead and coach teams to deliver high‑quality commercial outcomes, providing expert guidance on financial modelling, forecasting, billing, cost control and scenario planning to ensure robust commercial health.
Qualifications
- Significant experience leading commercial, contract and supplier management across complex client environments, with strong knowledge of commercial frameworks and contractual compliance.
- Proven background supporting major bids and business development activity, including opportunity qualification, commercial modelling, negotiation and shaping large, high‑risk proposals.
- Strong client‑facing experience, with the ability to build relationships at senior levels, resolve disputes, and identify opportunities to improve margin and reduce commercial or contractual risk.
- Demonstrable experience assuring delivery performance against commercial plans, driving continuous improvement, and ensuring service levels, invoicing and compliance are met.
- Strong risk management capability, with a track record of identifying, assessing and mitigating commercial risks across both bids and live contracts.
- High level of financial literacy, including experience of forecasting, billing, cost control and interpreting complex financial models to support commercial decision‑making.
Preferred
- Experience within BPO, pensions payroll or defence environments would be highly advantageous.
Role is advertised as full‑time, though flexible working arrangements may be offered.
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
We embrace difference as a source of creativity, innovation and competitive advantage and are striving to become a more diverse organisation. We welcome applications from people with a diverse variety of backgrounds and identities. We are committed to equality of opportunity for all and do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, colour, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation or marital status. We have partnered with Vercida, the UK’s largest diversity and inclusion focused careers site, where all our vacancies are available in an accessible format. If you require any adjustments to the recruitment process, to enable you to perform to the best of your ability, please let us know when completing your application. We participate in the Disability Confident scheme and are committed to offering an interview to any candidate with a disability, who meets the minimum criteria for the role. If you believe this could apply to you, please let us know when completing your application.
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