Strategic Account Manager

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.

About the Role

The Strategic Account Manager owns one of the most consequential commercial relationships at Protege: th Foundation labs and Frontier AI builders — organizations like OpenAI, Meta, Google, Apple, and Anthropic — that are defining what AI becomes.

This is not a conventional sales role. A SAM's job is not to simply to close a series of unrelated deals. A SAM's job is to engineer high-value relationships and drive unimpeachable value, en route to driving significant GMV for Protege. You are the primary commercial owner of a small number of accounts that represent tens of millions of dollars of annual revenue potential — and the relationships that make Protege's broader business possible.

You will work in close partnership with DataLab researchers, Product Success, and Partnerships to translate complex, multi-modal data needs into real solutions — often before our customers fully know what they need. You understand how foundation models are built, what researchers care about, and how to show up as a trusted partner rather than a vendor. You think in multi-year relationship arcs, not quarterly close dates.

What You'll Do

• Own a portfolio of 2–4 foundation lab or frontier AI accounts end-to-end — from relationship development and deal structuring through contracting, delivery handoff, and expansion.

• Map the full account landscape: identify key researchers, data science leads, procurement stakeholders, and executive sponsors. Understand who influences decisions and who makes them.

• Lead business-level discovery across departments and functions to identify projects and opportunities for Protege to broaden and deepen our penetration of each account

• Coordinate the teams who interact technically with our customer research teams -You’ll work closely with our Solutions and DataLab teams to do so

• Build and maintain a living account plan for each strategic account, including deal chronology, relationship health, 12-month GMV potential, open opportunities, and known risks.

• Orchestrate internal resources — DataLab, Solutions, Partnerships, Legal, Customer Success Manger (CSM) — to deliver on commitments and protect relationship equity. You are the single point of commercial accountability.

• Drive multi-year, multi-modal deal strategy: structure agreements that deepen account relationships over time rather than optimizing for individual transaction size.

• Surface patterns across your accounts that inform Protege's data supply strategy, product roadmap, and go-to-market — you are on the frontier of what the world's best AI labs need next.

• Maintain rigorous deal hygiene: accurate forecasting, clean Deal Desk submissions, documented handoffs to CSM and Product Success at close.

• Represent Protege at field events, research dinners, and conferences where foundation lab relationships are built and deepened.

What Success Looks Like

30 Days — Learn the accounts. Earn the right to lead them.

• Complete deep account briefings on each assigned account: deal history, active relationships, open opportunities, delivery status, and known risks.

• Shadow existing deal conversations, Deal Desk sessions, and DataLab research calls to understand how Protege's internal machine works.

• Establish direct relationships with your primary points of contact at each account — researchers, data leads, and commercial stakeholders.

• Identify the single highest-priority open opportunity in each account and develop a clear point of view on what it will take to close it.

60 Days — Lead the commercial motion. Deepen the relationships.

• Own all commercial conversations in your accounts, with DataLab and Product Success running alongside you — not in front of you.

• Have a credible 90-day pipeline view for each account: committed deals, active opportunities, and what is needed to progress each.

• Complete account plans for each strategic account in the standard format, reviewed with Don and