JOB TITLE: Commercial Specialist
LOCATION: Jakarta, Indonesia
CONTRACT TYPE: Permanent, full-time
REPORTING TO: Business Development Strategist
PURPOSE OF THE ROLE
The Commercial Specialist will ensure Acorn understands exactly what it is committing to commercially before submitting a proposal. The role will examine scopes in detail, build defensible cost models and identify ambiguity, hidden effort and commercial risk before commitments are made to clients.
Working closely with the Business Development Strategist and teams across Finance, Operations, Project Management and Account Management, the successful candidate will coordinate compliant, on-time submissions and carry approved scopes through to delivery. They will provide clear handovers, support change requests and help build the structured commercial processes and records needed for sustainable agency growth.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
- Read RFPs, tenders and client briefs in full, extracting every deliverable, volume, service level and submission requirement.
- Build structured and defensible cost models against the agreed rate card, documenting assumptions and the basis for each estimate.
- Identify gaps between stated budgets and the true cost of delivery, escalating material concerns before the agency makes a commitment.
- Interrogate vague or ambiguous scopes, raise clarification questions within tender windows and surface hidden effort or delivery risk early.
- Review client terms, NDAs and contractual requirements for commercial impact, flagging changes to cost, risk or delivery obligations and routing documents for the appropriate approval or signature.
- Check that proposals, forms and declarations meet all stated client requirements before submission.
- Coordinate input from senior stakeholders and cross-functional teams, following up professionally to keep concurrent submissions on track.
- Submit approved proposals, confirm receipt and resolve technical or administrative issues before external deadlines.
- Maintain a clearly named, accurate and reusable library of proposals, costings, source materials and commercial records.
- Hand approved scopes over to Account Management with deliverables, assumptions, commitments and commercial boundaries clearly documented.
- Support Account Managers with change requests and scope variations, re-costing work and highlighting the commercial impact of proposed changes.
- Use AI tools critically to improve the speed and quality of scope review and proposal work, validating outputs and refining prompts or processes over time.
QUALIFICATIONS
- Bachelor's degree in Business, Finance, Commercial Management, Project Management or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
- 5 years of agency-side experience in a commercial, scoping, bid-management or proposal-management role, ideally across communications, creative, social media or third-party supplier services.
- Demonstrated ability to interpret complex or poorly structured briefs and translate them into complete, clearly defined scopes of work.
- Experience building and explaining cost models from a rate card, with clear assumptions and sound commercial judgement.
- Strong critical-thinking skills, with the confidence to challenge ambiguity, identify hidden effort and explain the commercial consequence of missed requirements.
- Experience reviewing terms, NDAs and submission requirements for commercial and delivery implications, and routing issues for appropriate approval.
- Strong AI fluency, including the ability to assess AI-generated outputs critically, distinguish substantive gaps from surface issues and improve prompts or workflows.
- Confidence using structured costing, CRM and project-management systems; experience with platforms such as HubSpot or ClickUp would be advantageous.
- Exceptional attention to detail across costings, forms, declarations, records and submission requirements.
- Strong stakeholder-management and communication skills, including professional persistence when coordinating input from senior colleagues.
- A methodical and composed approach to managing multiple concurrent deadlines and resolving issues under pressure.
- High integrity when handling confidential client and commercial information, combined with strong ownership, collaboration and learning agility.
WHY JOIN US?
- Be part of a global, growing organisation with exposure across multiple markets.
- Work in a collaborative, multicultural environment.
- Opportunity for career growth as the organisation expands.
- Help build a disciplined, scalable commercial process that protects delivery quality and sustainable agency growth.
ABOUT ACORN STRATEGY
Voted Large Agency of the Year and winner of multiple international awards, Acorn Strategy is a full-service communications consultancy with offices in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Melbourne, Perth, and London, and an ever-expanding client roster. We are an integrated marketing, public relations, and digital consultancy that delivers sharp, agile, and creative strategies to help grow our clients' business.
OUR CULTURE
We understand that our success depends on recruiting and retaining the highest quality individuals. We have created an environment for people to grow and learn through a culture that empowers creativity, innovation, and professionalism. The core values we live by are collaboration, agility, bravery, curiosity, and integrity.
OUR PEOPLE
Over the years we have come to realise that although each of our team members are unique, we each share a series of personal traits that have successfully linked us culturally as a team and as an agency at large.
ACORN STRATEGY is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are dedicated to creating and building a respectful and empowering environment. We aim to create an inclusive workplace that supports our diversity and increases our potential to produce work that better represents and resonates with the world around us.
