Pricing Analyst

Description Manhattan Strategy Group is seeking approval to recruit a Pricing Analyst to increase the Pricing Department's capacity to independently manage federal proposal pricing efforts, perform advanced financial analysis, apply responsible artificial intelligence (AI), and support the continued growth of MSG's federal business portfolio. The position will provide experienced pricing support for concurrent proposals, task orders, contract modifications, requests for quotations, best-and-final offers, and other cost and pricing activities. The Pricing Analyst will independently manage routine and moderately complex pricing assignments while supporting the Sr Pricing Manager on high-value, complex, or strategically significant opportunities. The position will strengthen MSG's financial modeling, quality-control, and AI-enabled analytical capabilities; reduce key-person dependency; improve the accuracy, competitiveness, profitability, and timeliness of pricing submissions; and provide experienced technical guidance to junior pricing personnel. The Pricing Analyst will independently support and manage the development of accurate, compliant, competitive, and financially sound cost and price proposals for federal government opportunities. The successful candidate will use advanced Microsoft Excel, financial modeling, and approved AI-enabled tools to analyze solicitation requirements, develop pricing models, evaluate labor and non-labor costs, assess profitability and pricing risk, coordinate proposal inputs, prepare cost-volume documentation, and present pricing recommendations to management. This position requires an experienced pricing professional who can determine when AI is appropriate, design effective prompts and controlled workflows, critically evaluate AI outputs, protect sensitive information, and remain fully accountable for the accuracy and defensibility of all pricing analyses and deliverables. The Pricing Analyst will work closely with capture, proposal, contracts, finance, accounting, human resources, recruiting, operations, project management, subcontractors, consultants, technical personnel, and company leadership. The analyst will also provide technical guidance, quality-control assistance, and responsible AI coaching to junior pricing personnel. Job Duties and Responsibilities Solicitation, Compliance, and Pricing Strategy Analysis Review requests for proposals, requests for quotations, task-order requests, amendments, statements of work, performance work statements, and related solicitation documents. Identify pricing instructions, required formats, deadlines, contract types, periods of performance, labor categories, contract line-item numbers, evaluation factors, and compliance requirements. Evaluate government-provided pricing workbooks, schedules, templates, and attachments. Identify unclear instructions, conflicting requirements, missing information, mathematical inconsistencies, compliance concerns, and potential pricing risks. Use approved AI tools to accelerate solicitation analysis, compare amendments, extract structured requirements, develop compliance matrices, and draft clarification questions while independently validating all findings against complete source documents. Develop recommended pricing assumptions and approaches for review by the Sr Pricing Manager. Participate in proposal kickoff meetings, solutioning sessions, pricing strategy discussions, and management reviews. Evaluate pricing approaches that balance competitiveness, affordability, profitability, customer requirements, and performance risk. Track solicitation amendments and maintain pricing compliance checklists, assumption logs, schedules, outstanding questions, and action items. Excel-Based Pricing Model Development and Financial Analysis Independently develop, populate, maintain, and update Excel-based cost and pricing models for routine and moderately complex opportunities. Calculate labor hours, full-time-equivalent staffing, direct labor rates, escalation, fringe, overhead, general and administrative expenses, subcontractor costs, consultant costs, travel, other direct costs, fee, discounts, and total evaluated price. Translate staffing plans, technical approaches, work breakdown structures, and levels of effort into detailed labor-hour and labor-cost estimates. Prepare pricing by employee, labor category, task, contract line item, geographic location, period of performance, and cost element. Perform scenario and sensitivity analyses involving staffing levels, labor mix, salaries, indirect rates, escalation, subcontractor participation, fee, profit, discounts, and other assumptions. Conduct margin, profitability, contribution, break-even, wrap-rate, average-rate, and price-impact analyses. Use approved AI capabilities to support model design, formula development, formula documentation, data mapping, anomaly detection, and scenario generation while independently testing calculations and retaining a complete audit trail. Compare proposed pricing against historical information, incumbent rates, contract limitations, available market data, independent cost estimates, customer budgets, and other relevant benchmarks. Identify unsupported assumptions, cost outliers, affordability concerns, and potential profitability or performance risks. Reconcile internal pricing models with government pricing forms, proposal tables, cost narratives, and submission templates. Ensure that models contain clear, transparent, traceable, and reviewable formulas and correct broken formulas, circular references, inconsistent links, accidental overrides, and other workbook errors. Cost Proposal Preparation and Quality Control Prepare complete cost and price proposal volumes, pricing narratives, assumptions, tables, schedules, exhibits, and supporting documentation. Develop explanations of labor-rate methodology, escalation, indirect rates, fee, profit, subcontractor costs, consultant costs, travel, and other direct costs. Use approved AI tools to support drafting, document comparison, consistency testing, traceability review, and identification of potential omissions or contradictions while ensuring that final content reflects validated calculations and MSG-approved language. Reconcile totals among internal models, government forms, proposal tables, cost narratives, subcontractor submissions, and management summaries. Conduct detailed quality-control reviews, including formula checks, cross-footing, reasonableness testing, and vertical and horizontal analyses. Verify that costs roll up correctly by employee, labor category, task, contract period, contract line item, and cost element. Check for omitted or duplicate costs, incorrect periods, unsupported assumptions, inconsistent rounding, broken links, hidden errors, formula overrides, and unreliable AI-generated statements. Compare technical staffing assumptions with pricing models and identify inconsistencies between technical and cost proposal volumes. Lead or participate in independent peer reviews of pricing models and proposal documentation. Review work prepared by junior pricing personnel, including AI-assisted work, and provide clear and constructive feedback. Ensure that final pricing files are accurate, compliant, professionally formatted, and ready for management approval and submission. Pricing Coordination, AI Governance, Proposal Ownership, and Process Improvement Independently manage routine and moderately complex pricing assignments from proposal kickoff through submission. Develop pricing schedules, establish internal deadlines, identify dependencies, and communicate status to the Sr Pricing Manager and proposal leadership. Develop and distribute pricing data calls to internal personnel, subcontractors, consultants, and other contributors. Coordinate with proposal, capture, contracts, finance, accounting, human resources, recruiting, operations, project management, technical personnel, subcontractors, and consultants to obtain required pricing inputs. Review subcontractor and consultant submissions for completeness, compliance, mathematical accuracy, reasonableness, and alignment with the proposed scope of work. Track assignments, deadlines, data requests, assumptions, issues, risks, management decisions, revisions, and significant AI-assisted analyses. Prepare and present pricing summaries, scenario comparisons, financial analyses, risks, and recommendations during internal management reviews. Support customer clarifications, revised proposals, best-and-final offers, audits, fact-finding, negotiations, and final proposal revisions. Evaluate potential AI use cases and design controlled prompts, templates, and workflows that improve pricing efficiency without weakening compliance, confidentiality, auditability, or human accountability. Use only MSG-approved AI platforms and enforce company requirements for privacy, cybersecurity, records management, intellectual property, customer restrictions, and human review. Do not enter proprietary, employee compensation, procurement-sensitive, customer-controlled, export-controlled, or other confidential information into unapproved public AI tools. Provide technical guidance, quality-control assistance, and responsible AI training to junior pricing personnel. Recommend and implement improvements to pricing templates, Excel tools, AI-assisted workflows, rate libraries, checklists, trackers, documentation, and standard operating procedures. Identify opportunities to automate repetitive processes and improve the efficiency, consistency, and accuracy of pricing activities. Support the transition of awarded pricing information to contracts, finance, accounting, project control, and program-management teams. Required Qualifications Bachelor's degree in finance, accounting, economics, business administration, mathematics, statistics, data analytics, or a related discipline. A combination of relevant education, military service, federal contracting experience, proposal experience, financial analysis, or directly related professional experience may be considered in place of a directly related degree. Five to ten years of relevant professional experience in pricing, cost estimating, proposals, finance, accounting, budgeting, project control, contracts, or federal government contracting. Demonstrated experience developing cost and pricing models for federal government proposals. Advanced proficiency in Microsoft Excel and financial modeling. Demonstrated ability to use generative AI and AI-enabled productivity tools responsibly in financial, pricing, proposal, or analytical work. Ability to design effective prompts and structured workflows, evaluate AI outputs for accuracy and completeness, identify hallucinations or unsupported conclusions, and verify results against authoritative sources and approved assumptions. Experience independently managing routine or moderately complex pricing assignments. Working knowledge of federal acquisition and government-contract pricing principles. Experience developing labor rates, applying indirect rates, calculating escalation, and analyzing fee or profit. Experience preparing cost proposal volumes, pricing narratives, management analyses, and supporting documentation. Experience reviewing subcontractor, consultant, travel, and other direct cost inputs. Ability to identify pricing, compliance, affordability, profitability, and performance risks. Strong mathematical, quantitative, analytical, and problem-solving skills. Exceptional attention to detail and commitment to accuracy. Ability to manage multiple concurrent assignments and compressed deadlines. Strong written and verbal communication skills and the ability to present pricing analyses, risks, alternatives, and recommendations to financial and nonfinancial stakeholders. Ability to review the work of less-experienced analysts and provide constructive technical guidance. Ability to handle confidential, proprietary, compensation, procurement-sensitive, customer-controlled, and other restricted information. Required Excel and AI Capabilities Candidates should demonstrate advanced proficiency with: Multi-worksheet and multi-year pricing models; Complex mathematical, conditional, and lookup formulas; Absolute, relative, and mixed cell references; SUMIF, SUMIFS, COUNTIF, COUNTIFS, IF, IFS, IFERROR, XLOOKUP, VLOOKUP, INDEX, and MATCH; PivotTables and data summarization; Sorting, filtering, grouping, conditional formatting, and data validation; Formula auditing, tracing, and error identification; Scenario and sensitivity analysis; Rate buildup, escalation, indirect-cost, fee, profit, and margin calculations; Reconciliation among multiple worksheets, workbooks, proposal documents, and government forms; Workbook protection, version control, and submission preparation; Creating clear, transparent, traceable, and management-ready financial models; Designing effective prompts and reusable AI-assisted workflows for solicitation analysis, document comparison, drafting, formula support, structured extraction, and quality control; Evaluating AI outputs for accuracy, completeness, bias, source support, confidentiality concerns, and consistency with pricing models and proposal requirements; Maintaining traceability between source documents, approved assumptions, analyst judgment, model calculations, and AI-assisted outputs; Applying data-minimization, access-control, and information-protection principles when using AI tools; and Determining when AI should not be used and escalating sensitive or high-risk use cases to the Sr Pricing Manager or appropriate corporate authority. Preferred Qualifications Direct experience pricing federal professional-services, research, evaluation, communications, training, technical-assistance, program-management, or information-technology contracts. Familiarity with Firm-Fixed-Price, Time-and-Materials, Labor-Hour, Cost-Reimbursement, Indefinite-Delivery/Indefinite-Quantity, Blanket Purchase Agreement, and task-order contracts. Familiarity with the Federal Acquisition Regulation, applicable cost principles, certified cost or pricing data requirements, and Cost Accounting Standards. Experience with price-to-win analysis, competitive analysis, market research, independent cost estimates, or affordability analysis. Experience supporting customer clarifications, fact-finding, negotiations, audits, or final proposal revisions. Experience using Unanet, Deltek, ProPricer, Power BI, Power Query, SharePoint, Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT Enterprise, Gemini Enterprise, Claude Enterprise, or comparable approved enterprise tools. Experience developing prompt libraries, AI-assisted review frameworks, automated workflows, or governance controls for financial, pricing, proposal, or analytical work. Experience reviewing, coaching, or mentoring junior pricing personnel. Experience improving pricing procedures, templates, models, or internal controls. Professional certification or training in pricing, finance, accounting, contracts, project management, data analytics, artificial intelligence, or government acquisition. Manhattan Strategy Group (MSG) is an Equal Opportunity Employer and considers all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Our hiring decisions are based solely on merit and qualifications, ensuring a fair and competitive selection process. #J-18808-Ljbffr