Principal Contracts Strategist (Pre-Award)

Consequential Work. Dedicated People.

Why This Role Exists

We’re hiring a Principal Contracts Strategist to join our Contracting Team. This foundational, senior individual contributor role will own complex, high impact contract strategy and execution while building scalable systems that support our sales and growth goals.

Reporting to the Head of Contracts, you’ll work closely with contract administration, partnerships, legal, finance, sales, and customer relations. You’ll combine hands on execution with strategic ownership to guide critical contracting decisions, resolve ambiguity, and align contracts with business and customer needs.

This role is for someone who sees organizational scaling as an ongoing practice. You’ll address immediate contracting challenges while developing frameworks and processes that improve how we work over time. The role has no direct people management responsibilities but carries significant ownership, visibility, and influence across the organization.

What You’ll Do

Core responsibilities:

• Partner with the Head of Contracts to shape contract strategy, translate it into clear, sequenced priorities, and support transparent, seamless contract awards.

• Own complex contract analysis, negotiation, risk mitigation, and lifecycle management, aligning acquisition approaches with business goals and customer mission outcomes.

• Build and maintain reliable, scalable preaward workflows, contracting frameworks, playbooks, and decision models. Continuously improve processes through automation and operational efficiency.

• Coordinate across contract administration, partnerships, legal, finance, sales, and customer relations to align priorities, identify dependencies, resolve blockers, and mitigate risks.

Minimum Qualifications

• Deep expertise in federal government contracting (acquisition processes and regulations) and experience supporting software or technology-enabled products, including contracting models that support rapid delivery, enterprise adoption, and long-term mission outcomes.

• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field and at least 10 years of related experience as a contracts professional supporting contract strategy and administration.

• Experience supporting software or technology enabled products, including contracting models that enable rapid delivery, enterprise adoption, and lasting mission outcomes. Experience designing and executing flexible acquisition approaches, such as OTAs, hybrid vehicles, and novel contract structures, while managing risk.

• Experience scaling contracting functions in a high growth environment, building and refining systems and processes, and translating strategy into roadmaps and execution. Strong business judgment, analytical and problem solving skills, and attention to detail.

• Excellent written, verbal, negotiation, interpersonal, and time management skills, including in distributed or primarily asynchronous environments. Ability to lead through influence, build trust across functions, and operate independently with integrity and adaptability in a fast paced environment. Willingness to travel as needed.

• Ability to obtain a U.S. Government security clearance. U.S. citizenship is required.

Preferred Qualifications

• Prior experience as a federal government contracting officer, ideally with at least 8 years in that capacity.

• Experience scaling contract strategy and execution internationally.

Indicators of Success

This role will evolve as priorities change, but the outcomes below reflect what success typically looks like in the first six months.

A successful Principal Contracts Strategist will:

• Advance critical contract negotiations and awards, resolving blockers and making risks, tradeoffs, and decisions clear to stakeholders.

• Strengthen pre-award workflows so teams have clear ownership, reliable handoffs, and visibility into progress and dependencies.

• Develop and put into use contracting frameworks, playbooks, and decision models that improve consistency and support scalable execution.

• Build trusted partnerships across functions and implement practical process or automation improvements that reduce friction while maintaining contract quality and appropriate risk controls.