Strategic Partnerships Manager - Healthcare Administrative & Operations Data

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.

The role

Protege is hiring a Strategic Partnerships Manager - Healthcare Administrative & Operations Data to help customers and prospects access high-value, rights-protected healthcare data for AI training, post-training, evaluation, and workflow development.

You will sit at the intersection of customers, commercial teams, Data Lab, Solutions, Privacy and Legal, Operations, and healthcare data partners.

Your job will be to turn an unmet healthcare data need into a clear sourcing strategy, identify and qualify the right supply paths, and move the opportunity from first conversation through diligence, contracting, activation, and handoff.

This role is focused on administrative and operational data rather than primarily clinical or diagnostic datasets. Relevant workflows may include:

• Eligibility, enrollment, benefits, and member administration

• Claims, billing, payment, revenue cycle, and denial management

• Prior authorization, utilization management, and referral operations

• Scheduling, access, intake, registration, and care coordination

• Provider network, credentialing, staffing, and practice operations

• Contact center, patient/member communications, and service operations

• Pharmacy, lab, imaging, and other healthcare workflow operations

• Health plan, employer, third-party administrator, and population-health administration

• EHR, practice-management, care-management, and revenue-cycle workflow data

This is a generalist role with two connected motions:

• Reactive sourcing: Respond quickly to data requests tied to active customer and prospect opportunities, identifying the closest-aligned healthcare workflow or partner path and driving the work toward a viable commercial outcome.

• Proactive sourcing: Build relationships with promising healthcare organizations, technology companies, data aggregators, brokers, and channel partners before a specific deal requires them, using customer demand, market intelligence, and Data Lab priorities to decide where to invest.

You will not be responsible for sourcing everything indiscriminately. You will use judgment to prioritize healthcare data partners that are likely to create customer value, can meet Protege’s quality, privacy, and rights standards, and fit our commercial model.

What you’ll do

• Translate customer and prospect needs into clear healthcare data sourcing briefs, including workflow, population, modality, data elements, granularity, volume, format, geography, time period, refresh cadence, use case, rights requirements, and success criteria.

• Build a working map of healthcare administrative and operations data supply, including health systems, provider groups, payers, TPAs, MSOs, RCM companies, healthcare technology vendors, digital health companies, call centers, laboratories, pharmacies, data aggregators, brokers, and other relevant supply paths.

• Source and build trusted relationships with organizations that hold operationally rich healthcare data and can articulate its provenance, permissions, quality, and delivery model.

• Run partner discovery and qualification conversations to understand the underlying workflow, how the data is generated, what entities and events it represents, how it is linked, what fields and labels are available, and what transformations have been applied.

• Evaluate whether a dataset reflects real operational work rather than only static records, including queues, decisions, handoffs, exceptions, outcomes, timestamps, and longitudinal workflow context where appropriate.

• Assess privacy, security, and rights considerations early, including PHI and PII exposure, de-identification methodology, re-identification risk, consent or notice considerations, downstream use restrictions, data-use agreements, business-associate requirements, and any restrictions on AI training or model evaluation.

• Prioritize opportunities based on customer demand, strategic value, uniqueness, data quality, representativeness, feasibility, rights posture, delivery readiness, and the likelihood of a sustainable commercial relationship.

• Own partner progression from first conversation through NDA, sample intake, privacy and legal diligence, Data Lab evaluation, feedback, deal structuring, contracting, activation, and handoff into the appropriate operating team.

• Coordinate closely with Commercial, Data Lab, Solutions, Privacy, Security, Legal, Product, and Operations so that partner opportunities move quickly without creating avoidable delivery, rights, privacy, or pricing risk.

• Support customer and prospect deals by finding viable healthcare data paths, setting realistic expectations about coverage and limitations, and keeping internal and external stakeholders aligned on next steps.

• Help structure partnerships, including licensing, channel, co-development, exclusivity, data contribution, and other commercial arrangements, using Protege’s standard terms and pricing guardrails wherever possible.

• Maintain a clear, current view of partner capabilities, workflow coverage, data elements, active sourcing requests, qualification status, samples, risks, approvals, next steps, and commercial readiness in the systems of record.

• Develop repeatable healthcare-specific sourcing workflows, qualification criteria, partner-intake processes, privacy and rights checklists, sample-review standards, and handoff requirements that make the broader partnerships function more scalable.

• Bring market intelligence back to leadership, Data Lab, Product, and Commercial: what healthcare AI customers are asking for, where operational data supply is emerging, how partner economics are changing, and which data gaps are worth solving.

• Build trusted relationships with partners and make sure they receive clear communication, thoughtful process, and a credible path to value through Protege.

What success looks like

First 30 days: Learn the healthcare data landscape and create visibility

• Build a clear view of Protege’s active customer and prospect requests involving healthcare administrative and operations data.

• Learn Protege’s sourcing-to-activation workflow, healthcare data standards, privacy and rights review process, and operating model across GTM Partnerships, Commercial, Data Lab, Solutions, Operations, Privacy, Security, and Legal.

• Develop a practical market map of priority healthcare workflow categories, likely data holders, aggregators, brokers, and channel partners.

• Create a prioritized view of immediate reactive sourcing needs and proactive healthcare partner categories, with clear owners, qualification questions, and next steps.

• Independently run initial partner discovery and qualification conversations with strong notes, sound judgment, and consistent follow-through.

Days 31–60: Run the motion and move opportunities forward

• Consistently convert customer and prospect requests into actionable healthcare sourcing plans and qualified partner opportunities.

• Move priority partners through data-rights review, privacy diligence, sample coordination, Data Lab feedback, and commercial evaluation with tight cross-functional coordination.

• Demonstrate the ability to distinguish between a dataset that merely contains healthcare records and one that captures useful operational context, workflow sequence, or decision-relevant signals.

• Support active deals by identifying viable supply paths, surfacing rights, privacy, quality, and delivery risks early, and keeping partner and internal stakeholders aligned.

• Document the first version of reusable healthcare data qualification, sample-review, privacy-intake, and handoff workflows.

Days 61–90: Make healthcare sourcing more repeatable and commercially useful

• Establish a reliable operating rhythm for reactive deal support and proactive healthcare partner development.

• Build a prioritized partner pipeline that reflects customer demand, strategic workflow gaps, data quality, privacy and rights posture, delivery readiness, and commercial potential.

• Progress initial partner opportunities into activation or clearly documented next decisions, including why to advance, pause, or disqualify them.

• Deliver a 90-day view of what is working, what is not, where healthcare administrative and operations sourcing is creating the most commercial leverage, and which systems or decisions would help the function scale.

What you bring

We care more about what you have accomplished and how you operate than about a specific career path or number of years in a role.

• Experience in partnerships, business development, strategic sourcing, enterprise sales, marketplace development, procurement, healthcare operations, or a similarly commercial and relationship-oriented function.

• A track record of taking ambiguous opportunities from an initial question to a concrete plan, aligned stakeholders, and measurable progress.

• Strong commercial judgment: you can distinguish an interesting healthcare data partner from a partner worth investing in, and you are comfortable saying no when the fit is weak.

• Experience navigating multi-stakeholder work across external partners and internal teams, including technical, commercial, privacy, legal, security, and operational stakeholders.

• The ability to qualify healthcare data opportunities quickly by asking practical questions about the underlying workflow, data generation, quality, provenance, rights, privacy, scale, timeline, economics, and decision-makers.

• Enough healthcare fluency to understand how administrative and operational data is created, where it can be incomplete or biased, and how workflow context affects its usefulness.

• Strong written and verbal communication. You can explain nuanced healthcare data, AI training, privacy, and commercial considerations clearly to a customer, partner, researcher, operator, executive, or legal stakeholder.

• Operational rigor in pipeline and relationship management, including accurate records, clear ownership, crisp next steps, and consistent follow-through.

• Comfort working in an environment where the playbook is incomplete and priorities change as new customer demand emerges.

• A bias toward action and the persistence to keep complicated work moving without creating unnecessary friction.

• The ability to build trust with external partners while protecting Protege’s standards around rights, privacy, security, quality, delivery, and commercial sustainability.

Nice to have

• Experience with healthcare administrative, claims, payer, provider, revenue-cycle, prior-authorization, scheduling, call-center, pharmacy, laboratory, imaging, or care-management data.

• Experience working with health systems, provider groups, payers, TPAs, MSOs, healthcare technology vendors, digital health companies, or other healthcare organizations with operational data.

• Existing relationships with healthcare data holders, aggregators, brokers, technology vendors, or workflow operators.

• Experience with data licensing, AI/ML infrastructure, model development, evaluation, human data, or a two-sided marketplace.

• Experience evaluating samples or data products with technical, analytics, clinical, privacy, security, or operations teams.

• Familiarity with HIPAA, PHI, PII, de-identification, tokenization, linkage, consent, data-use agreements, business-associate requirements, intellectual property, licensing restrictions, or exclusivity structures.

• Experience assessing data representativeness, missingness, label quality, longitudinal continuity, entity resolution, workflow coverage, or sampling bias.

• Experience building partner programs, sourcing channels, pricing frameworks, qualification systems, privacy checklists, or other operating infrastructure from scratch.

• Experience working across multiple healthcare subsectors, workflows, or modalities rather than owning only one narrowly defined category.

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.