Protege Forward Deployed Engineer at Protege responsible for technical success of audio customers and building scalable data pipelines. Collaborate across teams to develop solutions for AI training data challenges.
Responsibilities
Protege is hiring an FDE to support our audio vertical. This is an engineering role with two key mandates: own the technical success for all audio customers, and build the reusable pipes that enable future scale. You will partner closely with the GM of the vertical, product and platform engineering, Data Lab, and commercial teams to navigate external requirements and develop solutions to execute on those requirements. Audio is a rapidly developing and evolving area at Protege — this role will be instrumental in defining how the function operates.
This role is ideal for engineers who prioritize both constantly learning through solving difficult problems and interfacing and directly owning customer outcomes. You'll be responsible for managing customer requests, newly ingested partner datasets and architecture decisions all at the same time, often across multiple deals. The pace is fast, the ambiguity is real, and when deals are live, availability outside standard hours is part of the job. If this type of environment and ownership excites you, there could be a strong fit.
Build the Technical Foundation for Audio
Develop and own the solutions that turn raw audio, with often unstructured or non-existent metadata, into organized and ready-to-sell datasets.
Build prototypes and phase them into reliable production systems that others can understand and operate.
Rapidly characterize large and unfamiliar audio datasets and determine whether they can support a customer's use case.
Own Customer Engagements End to End
Work with the GM of the audio vertical, core technical teams, and commercial stakeholders from feasibility through post-delivery support.
Translate a customer's model-development goals into an executable technical plan with clear acceptance criteria.
Own the implementation and operation of the engagements you lead.
Turn Deal Work Into Product Leverage
Work in tandem with the product and core engineering teams to identify areas of growth for the platform based on customer requests and learnings from the front lines.
Qualification
3+ years of experience as an engineerCustomer-facing abilityDemonstrated end-to-end ownershipExperience at an early-stage companyHands-on experience with PythonExperience with searchExperience with audio processingPass the Loved Ones’ Test
Required
3+ years of experience as an engineer, including meaningful exposure to customers or external technical stakeholders.
Experience working directly with media data, bonus points for direct work with audio data.
Experience building and operating systems that process, analyze, or deliver data at scale.
Customer-facing ability, including translating ambiguous requirements, communicating trade-offs, and building trust with technical stakeholders.
Demonstrated end-to-end ownership, from initial problem definition through implementation, validation, and support.
High ambiguity tolerance and bias to action, with the judgment to know when to investigate further or push back.
Comfort with the intensity and pace of a fast-moving environment, including multiple concurrent priorities and time-sensitive customer work.
Preferred
Experience at an early-stage company, as a founding or early engineer, or in another startup-like environment with broad ownership.
Hands-on experience with Python.
Product engineering experience or a strong product mindset developed in close partnership with users.
Experience with search, vector embeddings, semantic retrieval, or ML-assisted data curation.
Experience with our cloud and data infrastructure (AWS, Dagster, Databricks, Vercel are the key tools).
Experience with audio processing, speech or music ML, transcription, diarization, annotation, quality measurement, or privacy and redaction workflows.
Pass the Loved Ones’ Test
We act with integrity and do the right thing — especially when it’s hard and no one is watching.
