Strategic Partnerships Lead (Healthcare)

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:

We’re looking for a Strategic Partnerships Lead (Healthcare) to build and manage the data partner ecosystem that powers Protege’s healthcare AI products.

In this role, you’ll own the sourcing, evaluation, and closing of strategic partnerships with healthcare organizations, data aggregators, and technology companies that hold valuable multimodal healthcare data.

You’ll sit at the intersection of business development, science, and product — translating technical feasibility and data science requirements into scalable, commercial partnerships.

This isn’t a pure sales role — it’s a strategic, high-context position that requires deep understanding of how healthcare data can and should be used to fuel AI innovation.

Key Responsibilities:

Architect the Healthcare Data Supply Chain

• Identify and prioritize data partners across EHR, imaging, claims, genomics, consumer health data, and beyond

• Build a balanced data supply portfolio — filling gaps in modalities, diversity, and scale

• Map Protege’s data strategy to the needs of healthcare AI builders and model developers

Source and Close Strategic Partnerships

• Own the full partnership lifecycle: prospecting, outreach, structuring, and closing

• Negotiate agreements covering data access, licensing, and privacy compliance

• Partner with Legal and Compliance to ensure every agreement aligns with HIPAA, de-identification, and expert determination standards

Bridge Science, Product, and Commercial Goals

• Collaborate closely with the CSO and Head of Product to ensure partnerships support near-term delivery needs and long-term platform strategy

• Translate scientific or technical requirements into actionable partnership structures

• Bring market intelligence back into product and platform planning

Operationalize and Scale Partnerships

• Develop scalable playbooks for evaluating and onboarding data partners

• Collaborate with Product Success and Platform to ensure smooth handoff and ingestion

• Track partner performance and proactively manage renewals and expansions

Represent Protege in the Market

• Build and maintain relationships with senior executives at health systems, data networks, and AI developers

• Represent Protege at healthcare and AI conferences, positioning the company as the premier enabler of responsible AI data collaboration

About You:

• 7+ years of experience in healthcare data partnerships, business development, or strategy

• Deep understanding of healthcare data modalities (EHR, imaging, claims, genomic, device, or real-world data)

• Comfortable discussing AI training data requirements and data readiness with technical teams

• Demonstrated success sourcing, structuring, and closing complex partnerships

• Skilled in cross-functional influence — you can work with scientists, engineers, and lawyers without losing momentum

• Strategic thinker who’s also operationally disciplined; can build process while closing deals

• Pragmatic and credible — capable of pushing back on perfection in favor of scalability

Bonus:

• Advanced technical or scientific background (MS, PhD, or equivalent experience)

• Experience working in or with healthcare data aggregators, tokenization networks, or AI data providers

• Familiarity with privacy-preserving data linkage and de-identification workflows

Why Protege

• Shape the partnerships strategy powering AI innovation in healthcare

• Work with leading health systems, aggregators, and AI developers redefining data collaboration

• Collaborate with top-tier scientific and product leaders to bring groundbreaking data ideas to scale

• Competitive compensation, equity, and benefits package