Instead, every time I boot up I have to go into BIOS settings and select the windows boot manager in order to start up into windows.
This is what you should be using to boot a GPT drive, which since PC boots, is what you have. So is it set as 1st in boot order? Or are you saying it won't save the settings as that could mean you need to replace CMOS battery.
Setting ssd as 1st in line won't boot PC if its a EUFI bios that uses WIndows Boot Manager to boot GPT drives.
Having ssd as 1st is how all legacy systems work. Its not necessarily how UEFI systems work
There are two forms of bios, Legacy & UEFI (although that isn't technically true, most BIOS now are UEFI but can emulate Legacy).
Legacy wasn't always called legacy, it was just the BIOS. It was fine and did job good enough but it had limitations - it didn't know what a mouse did, it could only use so much space and it couldn't really be expanded to add new features.
UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) was created to replace and expand on legacy bios and allow it to fully service the needs of users. It knows what a mouse is, it even uses a GUI
One of the big ways was storage.
Legacy supported Master Boot Record drives (MBR) which can only have a max of 4 partitions (you could get more with tricks) , boot partition has to be 1st partition on the drive & max size of disks are 2.2 terabytes.
UEFI supports GUID (Globally Unique ID) Partition Table drives (GPT) (essentially every GPT drive on earth has its own unique number to ID it) . These drives can support up to 256 partitions on 1 drive, the boot partition can be anywhere, need not even in be in PC' and Max drive size is 18.8 million terabytes.
So basically, a legacy system needs the boot drive to be first but a UEFI system doesn't care, as long as its recorded in the windows boot manager, it can find it.
(Note: this is missing heaps of data but was simplified)