Job Description

Company Overview:

We are building Protege to solve the biggest unmet need in AI — getting access to the right training data. The process today is time intensive, incredibly expensive, and often ends in failure. The Protege platform facilitates the secure, efficient, and privacy-centric exchange of AI training data.

Solving AI’s data problem is a generational opportunity. We’re backed by world-class investors and already powering partnerships with some of the most ambitious teams in AI. The company that succeeds will be one of the largest in AI — and in tech.

We’re a lean, fast-moving, high-trust team of builders who are obsessed with velocity and impact. Our culture is built for people who thrive on ambiguity, own outcomes, and want to shape the future of data and AI.

Role Overview

Audio is one of Protege’s newest and fastest-evolving verticals. We work with audio data partners and AI companies to identify, curate, and deliver the right audio data (and metadata/additional modalities!).

As the generalist in the vertical, you’ll help find customer demand, match it up with high-quality audio supply, and move deals through the deal lifecycle in collaboration with the GM. You’ll help decide where the industry is going and be on point to bring in the right partners, manage data deliveries, and advocate for product features for our audio partners. In short, you will work closely with an experienced GM to see how a nascent business line grows, and you’ll be an integral part of stepping in where there are current resourcing gaps.

This role is ideal for someone who is highly organized, commercially minded, comfortable with rolling up their sleeves and energized by doing whatever is needed to move an early-stage vertical forward.

What You’ll Do

• Source, research, and qualify audio partners based on customer demand, including evaluating fit, rights, scale, language coverage, quality, and availability.
• Run partner and customer conversations, understand the underlying use case, and translate ambiguous requests into clear plans for sending sample data.
• Own the process of gathering and preparing sample data for prospective customers, including organizing audio, transcripts, metadata, and supporting context into clear customer-ready materials.
• Project-manage audio deals from feasibility through data packaging, quality review, and delivery — keeping internal and external stakeholders aligned.
• Support outbound to audio companies/model builders: develop targeted outreach, follow up persistently, and help build the vertical’s pipeline.
• Identify recurring needs and bottlenecks, then create lightweight tools, documentation, and processes that make the next customer or partner conversation or delivery faster.
• Work closely with the Audio GM, DataLab (our data researchers), forward-deployed engineers, sales, product, and legal folks to surface risks early and make sound decisions on rights, privacy, quality, and delivery tradeoffs.

What Success Looks Like

• 30 days: Learn Protege’s audio catalog, active deals, partner workflow, and audio use cases in the market; begin running outreach, overseeing sample requests and deliveries with support.
• 60 days: Independently manage a set of partner conversations and active deal-delivery work, with clear communication, reliable follow-through, and improving speed from request to sample.
• 90 days: Operate as a trusted generalist for the Audio GM across sourcing, samples, partner coordination, outbound, and delivery; establish repeatable processes that increase the team’s capacity.

What You Bring

• Experience in partnerships, business development, sales, solutions, operations, or customer-facing project management.
• Demonstrated ability to manage multiple moving pieces, drive follow-up, and own work from initial problem definition through completion.
• Strong written and verbal communication; you can make complex or incomplete information clear to partners, customers, and internal teams.
• Comfort with outbounding, building relationships, and navigating conversations where the right answer is not yet known.
• Sound judgment around prioritization, confidentiality, data rights, and when to escalate a risk.
• Interest in audio, media, speech AI, or training data. You do not need to be an audio researcher, but you should be curious enough to learn concepts such as transcripts, diarization, channel separation, language coverage, audio quality, and metadata.
• A bias to action, high ownership, and the ability to bring order to chaos without waiting for a perfect playbook.

Protege Values

Pass the Loved Ones’ Test

We act with integrity and do the right thing — especially when it’s hard and no one is watching.

Always Find a Way

We are resourceful, resilient builders who solve hard problems and push through obstacles.

Go Fast and Grow Fast

Velocity matters. We move with urgency, learn quickly, and continuously improve as individuals and as a company.

Practice Kindness and Candor

We communicate directly and respectfully, building trust through honest feedback and genuine care for one another.

Deliver Together

We win as one team. Collaboration, accountability, and shared ownership drive our success.

Own the Outcome. Hone the Craft.

We take pride in our work, sweat the details, and continuously raise the bar for excellence.