Plexal
Commercial Lead (Operations)
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The Role's Purpose
The Commercial Ops Lead provides senior operational ownership for Plexal’s Go-To-Market engine, ensuring sales administration, pipeline management, bid governance, reporting, framework management and commercial process ownership operate as one coherent, reliable function.
The role is designed to strengthen the commercial infrastructure that enables Plexal to identify, qualify, pursue and convert government and public sector opportunities; manage the frameworks and procurement routes that create access to those opportunities; and provide leadership with accurate, timely and actionable reporting.
What You'll Do
Commercial operations and GTM process ownership
- Own the end-to-end operating rhythm for GTM: pipeline hygiene, opportunity stage governance, bid/no-bid process, action tracking and reporting cadence.
- Lead the design, documentation and adoption of commercial processes across sales, bid management, framework management, approvals and handover to delivery.
- Own pipeline data quality across HubSpot/CRM and reporting tools, ensuring that dashboards, forecasts and leadership reports are robust, current and decision-ready.
- Work closely with GTM, Operations and Finance to improve forecasting accuracy, commercial visibility and management information.
Bid management, governance and quality assurance
- Oversee the bid process from opportunity qualification through to submission and delivery handover, ensuring clear ownership, timelines, compliance checks, internal sign-offs and record keeping.
- Provide practical challenge and support on bid strategy, compliance matrices, win themes, content quality and final submission readiness.
- Maintain and improve reusable bid assets, including case studies, credentials, CVs, accreditations, policies, social value content and standard commercial responses.
- Embed consistent bid governance, including role clarity, document control, review points, lesson capture and post-submission outcome tracking.
Framework and procurement vehicle management
- Own Plexal’s framework operating model, ensuring the business maintains a live register of framework positions, lots, expiry dates, renewal windows, call-off routes, portal access and reporting obligations.
- Monitor relevant public sector procurement routes and pipeline sources, including CCS frameworks, G-Cloud/Digital Marketplace, DPS arrangements, Find a Tender, Contracts Finder and department-specific portals.
- Manage the practical mechanics of framework applications, renewals, compliance returns and management information submissions, coordinating internal evidence and approvals on time.
- Mobilise new frameworks so that GTM and delivery teams understand how and when to use them, with clear guidance, ownership, risks, constraints and handover arrangements.
- Support security-clearance visibility where it affects framework eligibility, call-off readiness or client deployment requirements.
Commercial governance and stakeholder coordination
- Coordinate practical inputs from Sales, Delivery, Finance, Legal, People and Compliance to ensure bids and framework activity are commercially robust and operationally deliverable.
- Track key commercial risks, dependencies and decision points across live opportunities, frameworks and submissions, escalating where action or leadership direction is required.
- Support compliance with relevant public procurement requirements, the Procurement Act 2023, Social Value Model expectations, TOMs where applicable and Plexal’s internal governance standards.
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Team leadership and capability building
- Line manage and develop the Commercial Associate and Sales Enablement Co-ordinator, ensuring effective prioritisation, standards, knowledge transfer and resilience across core sales administration and framework activity.
- Create repeatable playbooks, templates and operating standards that reduce single-point dependency and improve consistency across GTM activity.
- Works closely with Operations and Resource Management to oversee and deliver a career development rotation scheme in Commercial department for Associates and Consultants, as appropriate.
Your Skills
Essential:
- Strong commercial operations, sales operations or bid operations capability, with confidence owning process, data, governance and reporting across multiple parallel opportunities.
- Excellent organisation and attention to detail, with the ability to manage deadlines, dependencies, submissions and reporting cycles without loss of quality.
- Advanced working knowledge of CRM, pipeline and reporting tools, including HubSpot, Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, SharePoint and PowerBI or equivalent reporting platforms.
- Strong understanding of UK public sector procurement routes, including frameworks, DPS arrangements, call-offs, mini-competitions and portal-based submissions.
- Ability to coordinate and influence senior stakeholders across sales, delivery, finance, legal/compliance and leadership teams.
Desirable:
- Familiarity with the Procurement Act 2023, Social Value Model, TOMs Framework, CCS frameworks, G-Cloud/Digital Marketplace and public sector compliance requirements.
- Understanding of ISO 9001, Cyber Essentials, information security evidence requirements and security-clearance tracking in government-facing work.
Your Experience
Essential:
- Experience in a commercial operations, sales operations, bid management, framework management or procurement-facing role, ideally supporting UK public sector sales and for a professional services business.
- Experience owning pipeline reporting, CRM data quality, bid governance, process improvement and management information for senior stakeholders.
- Experience coordinating complex bids or proposals, including evidence gathering, internal reviews, compliance checks and submission management.
- Experience working collaboratively across multiple disciplines, including commercial, delivery, operations, finance and compliance teams.
Desirable:
- Experience in an innovation, technology, startup, research or consultancy environment, with an interest in emerging technology and government transformation.
- Experience managing or supporting framework applications, renewals, call-offs, portal administration and management information returns.
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Who You Are
Due to the nature of this position, our work and our client engagements, the post holder must be willing and eligible to achieve a minimum of SC clearance. Pre-existing SC clearance is welcome.
- Requires occasional business travel across Plexal sites and client locations.
- Needs the ability to manage and influence through both face-to-face and virtual team environments.
- Calm, structured and proactive, with the ability to bring order to ambiguous or fast-moving commercial environments.
- Confident setting standards and holding stakeholders to process without slowing down commercial momentum.
- Able to work autonomously, escalate judiciously and communicate clearly with stakeholders at all levels.
- Collaborative, service-minded and comfortable balancing operational detail with commercial judgement.
Why us?
As a start-up, we thrive in a dynamic and fast-paced work environment dedicated to empowering innovators. We embrace individuals who leverage technology and creativity to tackle our greatest challenges head-on. We strongly advocate for maintaining a harmonious work-life balance, our goal is to ensure every member of our team can authentically be themselves and live their best lives. We firmly believe that innovation and creativity flourish when we cultivate a diverse workforce, comprising highly skilled individuals with a wide range of perspectives to contribute.
In return we will offer you:
- Salary: £60,000 - £80,000 depending on skills and experience
- Annual bonus scheme
- A generous pension scheme (with a company contribution of up to 10%)
- Private healthcare, life assurance and critical illness cover
- 25 days holiday plus bank holidays
- Volunteering day
Plexal is an equal opportunities employer and we actively encourage applicants from individuals from all backgrounds. We are a Disability Committed employer and are willing to make reasonable adjustments throughout the recruitment process.
About us
Plexal is the innovation and growth company helping to strengthen the UK’s technology capabilities through collaboration.
With teams in London, Manchester and Cheltenham, we work closely with government, industry, startups and academia to drive economic growth and reinforce national security.
Founded by Delancey in 2017, Plexal delivers four core services: creating workspaces for innovators, running innovation programmes and consultancy, building regional tech clusters and helping SMEs scale strategically.
By closing the gap between early-stage and established organisations – across the public and private sectors at home and abroad – we’ve impacted over 1,200 businesses, added £731m to the UK economy and helped create 9,400 jobs.
Headquartered at Here East on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Plexal partners with organisations including the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, the National Cyber Security Centre, Airbus, Amazon, Barclays Eagle Labs, Google Cloud, TfL, The Alan Turing Institute and the University of Oxford.
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