---
title: "Proposal Manager"
description: "Leads the team that writes winning responses to government and corporate requests for proposals, from strategy to final submission."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/proposal-manager"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Proposal Manager

**Category:** Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media · **SOC code:** 27-3042 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 27-3042.00

Leads the team that writes winning responses to government and corporate requests for proposals, from strategy to final submission.

Also advertised as: Capture Manager; Bid Manager; Proposal Writer; Proposal Coordinator; RFP Manager.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $90,390 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $43.46/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $57,440 to $145,270, with the middle half between $70,880 and $115,510
- **Total US employment:** 45,500
- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's
- **Preparation required:** Medium preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +0.8% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 3,200 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 11/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 45,500 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $57,440 |
| 25th | $70,880 |
| 50th (median) | $90,390 |
| 75th | $115,510 |
| 90th | $145,270 |
| Mean (average) | $96,970 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| NJ | $122,320 | $112,421 | 1,550 |
| DC | $117,810 | $107,196 | 440 |
| MA | $109,200 | $103,256 | 1,850 |
| WA | $104,070 | $97,250 | 1,620 |
| CA | $104,000 | $93,931 | 5,280 |
| RI | $102,360 | $100,078 | 150 |
| CT | $101,870 | $98,321 | 770 |
| MD | $100,990 | $96,219 | 1,780 |
| CO | $100,610 | $97,630 | 1,320 |
| NY | $98,310 | $91,094 | 1,610 |
| NH | $96,300 | $92,449 | 230 |
| NM | $94,970 | $102,991 | 420 |
| VA | $93,600 | $92,578 | 2,280 |
| DE | $90,370 | $90,544 | 80 |
| NV | $88,750 | $88,769 | 230 |

31 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 46 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/proposal-manager/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/proposal-manager.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 46,400 in the 2025–2035 base year to 46,700 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 400 jobs, or +0.8%. Slower than average: 0.8% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 3,200 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Medium preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** Less than 5 years.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** Short-term on-the-job training.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| Associate's Degree or other 2-year degree | 35.3% |
| Bachelor's Degree | 33.0% |
| Some College Courses | 15.9% |
| Post-Secondary Certificate | 6.9% |
| Master's Degree | 5.5% |
| Post-Baccalaureate Certificate | 2.5% |

## What the work involves

- Analyze RFP requirements and build compliance matrices
- Create proposal outlines, schedules and writing assignments
- Write and edit executive summaries and technical sections
- Run structured color team reviews of draft proposals
- Coordinate graphics, pricing volumes and resumes
- Check final documents against formatting and page-limit rules
- Submit proposals and manage questions from the buyer

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Writing — importance 4.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 2.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 2.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 2.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Negotiation — importance 2.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 2.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- English Language — importance 4.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Computers and Electronics — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administrative — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Communications and Media — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administration and Management — importance 3.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Public Safety and Security — importance 3.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Written Expression — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Near Vision — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Conventional (C), Artistic (A), Investigative (I).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| C — Conventional | 5.34 |
| A — Artistic | 4.40 |
| I — Investigative | 3.69 |
| E — Enterprising | 3.18 |
| R — Realistic | 2.78 |
| S — Social | 2.01 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| INTJ | 73.2 |
| ISTJ | 68.2 |
| INFJ | 58.9 |
| ENTJ | 58.5 |
| ISFJ | 57.0 |

Best-fitting types: INTJ, ISTJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Technical Writer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/technical-writer) — median $90,390
- [Document Management Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/document-management-specialist) — median $116,580
- [Project Management Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/project-management-specialist) — median $102,320
- [Editor](https://nuecareer.com/careers/editor) — median $77,920
- [Management Analyst](https://nuecareer.com/careers/management-analyst) — median $101,860
- [Proofreader and Copy Marker](https://nuecareer.com/careers/proofreader-and-copy-marker) — median $51,120
- [Data Scientist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/data-scientist) — median $120,230
- [Clinical Data Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/clinical-data-manager) — median $120,230
- [Social Science Research Assistant](https://nuecareer.com/careers/social-science-research-assistant) — median $61,990
- [Writer and Author](https://nuecareer.com/careers/writer-and-author) — median $76,910

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/proposal-manager