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Protege is building a platform to solve AI's biggest unmet need: secure, efficient, and privacy-centric access to high-quality training data. The company is backed by world-class investors and already powers partnerships with leading AI teams.
As Data Partnerships Manager, you will sit at the intersection of customers, commercial teams, Data Lab, Solutions, Operations, and external data partners. Your role bridges reactive and proactive sourcing motions:
Reactive Sourcing: Respond quickly to data requests tied to active customer and prospect deals. Identify the closest-aligned vertical or partner path and drive opportunities toward viable commercial outcomes.
Proactive Sourcing: Build relationships with promising data holders, aggregators, brokers, and channel partners before specific deals require them, using customer demand, market intelligence, and Data Lab priorities to guide investment decisions.
Key Responsibilities:
- Translate customer and prospect data needs into clear sourcing briefs (modality, use case, volume, format, geography, timeline, rights requirements, success criteria).
- Source and build relationships with data holders, aggregators, brokers, channel partners, and other high-leverage supply paths across verticals and modalities.
- Run partner discovery and qualification conversations to assess data capabilities, provenance, rights, licensing, exclusivity, privacy considerations, scale, technical maturity, and commercial potential.
- Prioritize opportunities based on customer demand, strategic value, data quality, uniqueness, feasibility, and likelihood of sustainable commercial relationships.
- Own partner progression from first conversation through NDA, sample intake, Data Lab evaluation, feedback, diligence, deal structuring, contracting, activation, and handoff.
- Coordinate closely with Commercial, Data Lab, Solutions, Product, Legal, and Operations to move partner opportunities quickly without creating delivery, rights, or pricing risk.
- Support customer and prospect deals by finding viable data paths, setting realistic expectations, and keeping stakeholders aligned.
- Help structure partnerships including licensing, channel, co-development, and exclusivity arrangements using Protege's standard terms and pricing guardrails.
- Maintain clear, current visibility of partner capabilities, active requests, qualification status, samples, risks, and commercial readiness in systems of record.
- Develop repeatable sourcing workflows, qualification criteria, partner-intake processes, and handoff standards to scale the partnerships function.
- Bring market intelligence to leadership, Data Lab, Product, and Commercial on customer demand, emerging supply, partner economics, and addressable gaps.
- Build trusted relationships with partners, ensuring clear communication, thoughtful process, and credible paths to value.
Success Milestones:
- Days 1–30: Learn the business, build visibility into active requests and partner landscape, meet key stakeholders, and create a prioritized view of immediate needs.
- Days 31–60: Consistently convert requests into actionable sourcing plans, move priority partners through diligence and evaluation, support active deals, and document reusable workflows.
- Days 61–90: Establish reliable operating rhythm, build prioritized partner pipeline, progress opportunities into activation or clear decisions, and deliver insights on what is working and how to scale.
Requirements:
- Experience in partnerships, business development, strategic sourcing, enterprise sales, marketplace development, procurement, or similarly commercial and relationship-oriented functions.
- Experience working in the revenue cycle market (RCM), either directly or as part of larger healthcare operations.
- Track record of taking ambiguous opportunities from initial question to concrete plan, aligned stakeholders, and measurable progress.
- Strong commercial judgment: ability to distinguish interesting partners from worth-investing-in partners; comfort saying no when fit is weak.
- Experience navigating multi-stakeholder work across external partners and internal teams (technical, commercial, legal, operational).
- Ability to qualify data or technology opportunities quickly by asking practical questions about use case, quality, provenance, rights, scale, timeline, economics, and decision-makers.
- Strong written and verbal communication; ability to explain nuanced data or AI training concepts to customers, partners, researchers, operators, and executives.
- Operational rigor in pipeline and relationship management: accurate records, clear ownership, crisp next steps, consistent follow-through.
- Comfort working in incomplete playbooks with changing priorities as customer demand emerges.
- Bias toward action and persistence to keep complicated work moving without unnecessary friction.
- Ability to build trust with external partners while protecting Protege's standards around rights, privacy, quality, delivery, and commercial sustainability.
Nice to Have:
- Experience with data licensing, AI/ML infrastructure, model development, evaluation, human data, or two-sided marketplaces.
- Existing relationships with data aggregators, brokers, expert networks, content owners, healthcare organizations, media companies, or other data-holding organizations.
- Experience evaluating samples or data products with technical teams.
- Familiarity with data provenance, privacy, de-identification, intellectual property, licensing restrictions, or exclusivity structures.
- Experience building partner programs, sourcing channels, pricing frameworks, qualification systems, or operating infrastructure from scratch.
- Experience working across multiple verticals or modalities rather than owning one narrowly defined category.
