Bid Designer

Location: Mundells, Welwyn Garden City

Salary Range: £36,857 per Annum (DOE)

Hours: Full-time, 37 hours per week

Contract: Permanent

Reports to: Head of Marketing

About HCL

HCL is a leading education catering provider committed to improving children’s health and wellbeing through fresh, nutritious meals and positive dining experiences. We support hundreds of schools across the region, helping them create enjoyable, informative, and engaging food environments that enhance school life.

Role Overview

We are looking for a talented and versatile Bid Designer to join our Marketing Team. This role blends tender design with supporting day-to-day marketing design, offering an excellent balance of structured document design and creative visual work.

You will take the lead on bid and tender design, ensuring our submissions are visually compelling, compliant, and reflective of HCL’s values. Alongside this, you will support the Marketing Team with marketing design requirements, working closely with our Lead Graphic Designer.

This is a fast-paced, busy, and varied role, with peak activity during tender cycles and opportunities to contribute to wider marketing projects during quieter periods such as school holidays.

Key Responsibilities

Tender & Bid Design (Primary Responsibility)

• Lead the design and production of visually strong, structured tender submissions.
• Create layouts, infographics, diagrams, charts, and visuals that enhance clarity and impact.
• Work with the Sales team to translate written content into professional, compelling bid documents.
• Develop pitch decks, bid covers, templates, and supporting sales materials.
• Ensure accuracy, consistency, and compliance across all tender content.
• Support Sales with design requirements, including collateral used in presentations, pitch documents, and tender storytelling.
• Collate and organise all collateral required for Sales presentations, ensuring files are accessible, up-to-date, and brand-consistent.

Brand & Asset Management

• Maintain design templates, brand assets, and shared libraries used for both bids and marketing.
• Produce print-ready and digital-optimised artwork.
• Champion brand consistency across all design outputs.
• Maintain a Case Study Log, ensuring all designed case studies are stored, version-controlled, and easily accessible for Sales, Bids, and Marketing.
• Support ongoing development of sales collateral templates and toolkits.

Marketing & Creative Support (In partnership with the Graphic Designer)

• Support the production of marketing assets such as menus, posters, case studies, school campaign materials, and internal communications visuals.
• Work alongside the Graphic Designer, who sets creative direction and brand standards for marketing design.
• Step in to deliver marketing design work when the Graphic Designer is unavailable (e.g., annual leave, offsite work, high-volume periods).
• Contribute creative ideas and solutions that complement existing brand frameworks.
• Ensure all marketing outputs follow brand guidelines and maintain visual consistency.
• Organise the printing, delivery and preparation of marketing assets, including posters, brochures, and printed materials for both Sales and Marketing.
• Create design assets for events, including banners, signage, display boards, and supporting collateral.

Person Specification

Skills & Experience

• Advanced proficiency in Adobe Creative Cloud:
• InDesign (essential)
• Illustrator
• Photoshop
• Proven experience designing tenders, proposals, or long-form documents.
• Strong layout, formatting, and typographic skills.
• Proof-reading skills.
• Ability to turn complex content into clear, visually engaging designs.
• Experience producing artwork for both print and digital.
• Excellent attention to detail and commitment to quality.
• Strong organisational skills with the ability to manage multiple deadlines.
• Experience in education, catering, hospitality, or public sector bidding is a plus.

Personal Attributes

• Creative, proactive, and detail-obsessed.
• Calm, composed, and efficient under pressure.
• Collaborative, respectful, and comfortable working with colleagues at all levels.
• Adaptable to seasonal workload changes and shifting priorities.
• Confident in taking full ownership of bid design while flexibly supporting wider Marketing Team work.