Capture Manager

Umbra • Santa Barbara, CA

6h • Onsite

About The Position

We are looking for a Capture Manager to join Umbra’s Space Systems team. In this role, you will support business development efforts for commercial and government customers by helping keep opportunities organized, building clear capture plans, and coordinating the internal work needed to respond to customer requests.
You will help gather customer needs, track actions and deadlines, and pull together inputs from engineering, product, contracts, and finance to create strong RFI/RFQ and proposal responses. You’ll partner closely with the BD Director and technical teams to make sure our offers are accurate, consistent, and easy for customers to understand.
Strong communication and follow-through are essential. This role works with both technical and non-technical stakeholders, provides clear updates to leadership, and helps maintain long-term customer relationships by being responsive and dependable. As you learn about Umbra’s products and customers, you’ll contribute to improving our proposal content, capturing lessons learned, and building better insight into target accounts and competitors.
The role also includes market research and trade show support—researching target customers and competitors, helping prepare for events, capturing notes and follow-ups, and summarizing customer and competitive takeaways that improve future pursuits.
This position is based on-site in our Santa Barbara/Goleta, CA office.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree with a STEM or business concentration.
• 3-5+ years of relevant professional business development experience, with at least one year of experience working in capture or program management supporting government contracts or the aerospace and defense domain.
• Proven ability to define and manage technical development and/or R&D scope and technical teams.
• Experience working with business development and leading captures and/or proposals.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Able to travel domestically or internationally up to 10% of the time.

Nice To Haves

• 7+ years of relevant professional experience in the space industry, with 2+ years of professional experience working in capture or program management supporting government contracts or the aerospace and defense domain.
• Proactive, emotionally intelligent leader who takes initiative, navigates ambiguity with confidence, and advocates for critical issues while building strong cross-functional relationships.
• Comfortable working in a dynamic and fast-paced development environment.
• Experience leading and executing complex space or defense programs, including planning, team building, and delivery with clear ownership with minimal oversight.
• Background working with government, defense, intelligence, or civil space customers, including experience as a subcontractor providing capability to a prime, systems-level contractor.
• Experience supporting competitive captures and program execution for satellite components.
• Understanding of systems engineering processes and system architectures.

Responsibilities

• Opportunity Management: Keep each opportunity organized—draft and maintain the capture plan, track actions and deadlines, and ensure follow-ups happen.
• Cross-Functional Coordination: Pull together inputs from engineering, product, contracts, finance, and supply chain to keep everyone aligned on scope, schedule, pricing, and risks.
• Proposal Execution: Drive the proposal workflow—build the requirements checklist, manage outlines and reviews, coordinate edits, and support on-time final submission for RFI/RFQ and proposals.
• Pipeline & Reporting: Keep the pipeline and CRM current—log next steps, dates, and risks, and provide a short weekly status summary to support forecasting and leadership updates.
• Market & Customer Research: Build and maintain account-level understanding—research target customers and buying paths, track competitors and alternatives, and support trade shows/events to gather intel, build relationships, and turn conversations into actionable follow-ups.
• All other duties as assigned.

Benefits

• Flexible Time Off, Sick, Family & Medical Leave
• Medical, Dental, Vision, Life, LTD, STD (employer funded)
• Vol Life, Critical Illness, Accidental, Hospital Indemnity, Pet Insurance (employee funded)
• 401k with 3% non-elective company contribution
• Stock Options
• Free parking
• Free lunch daily in office

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level