Capture Lead - Federal

Cognition is building its federal business, and capture is the engine that drives it. We're hiring a Capture Lead to partner directly with Federal leadership and own that engine end to end—from identifying the right pursuits to standing up the systems that make winning repeatable. This is a builder's role: you'll create the capture function, not inherit one.

Responsibilities

Partner with Federal sales leadership on quarterly and annual capture planning; Partner with GTM, Mission Success, and Engineering on deal structuring, pricing strategy, and negotiation across contract vehicles; Track and prioritize contract vehicle strategy (GSA, OTAs, IDIQs, SBIR pathways, prime/sub relationships); Identify and track relevant federal solicitations, from initial RFI through final RFP; Build the operational backbone for proposal response: intake, qualification, bid/no-bid decisioning, color team review cadence, and compliance; Manage relationships with proposal and capture partners supporting RFI-to-RFP response on Cognition's behalf; Build and maintain proposal collateral, and maintain the past performance, capabilities, and pricing libraries that compound across pursuits; Define the metrics that matter for a federal GTM motion and build dashboards that surface them; Own solicitation response tracking across active pursuits; Run the red-team/AAR process on wins and losses; turn lessons learned into repeatable best practices; Identify operational bottlenecks and build the systems, processes, and tooling to remove them

Requirements

4+ years of experience in federal business operations, capture management, or revenue strategy at a defense tech, federal SaaS, or government services company; Deep fluency in federal procurement: contract vehicles, working knowledge of FAR/DFARS, capture lifecycle, and the rhythm of federal sales cycles; Strong analytical foundation—you can build the model, run the analysis, and tell the story; Track record of working in and building capture programs from scratch in a fast-moving environment; Comfort operating without a playbook, and a low ego about doing the work yourself; Based in Washington, DC, or willing to relocate

Nice to have

Security clearance preferred; ability to obtain one