{"id":124056,"url":"https://alion.io/job/protege-forward-deployed-engineer-audio","title":"Forward Deployed Engineer, Audio","company":{"id":1805974,"name":"Protege","domain":"withprotege.ai","url":"https://alion.io/company/withprotege","size_band":"201-500","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":95,"open_postings":9,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":113,"computed_at":"2026-10-23T05:54:15Z"}},"role":"Solutions","role_family":"Solutions","seniority":"middle","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"remote","remote_scope":"stated_countries","remote_scope_basis":"board_field","remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":[],"countries":[],"hiring_countries":["US"],"hiring_countries_total":1,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":96000,"max_usd":204000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":187},"experience_years_min":3,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AWS","optional":true},{"name":"Dagster","optional":true},{"name":"Databricks","optional":true},{"name":"Embeddings","optional":true},{"name":"Python","optional":true},{"name":"Vercel","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-08-25T13:28:54Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-08-25","last_verified_at":"2026-10-23T19:08:37Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":59,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":1,"flags":[],"days_open":58},"description":"Company Overview:\nWe 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.\nSolving 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.\nWe’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.\nAbout the Role\nProtege 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.\nThis 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.\nWhat You'll Do\nBuild the Technical Foundation for Audio\nDevelop and own the solutions that turn raw audio, with often unstructured or non-existent metadata, into organized and ready-to-sell datasets.\nBuild prototypes and phase them into reliable production systems that others can understand and operate.\nRapidly characterize large and unfamiliar audio datasets and determine whether they can support a customer's use case.\nOwn Customer Engagements End to End\nWork with the GM of the audio vertical, core technical teams, and commercial stakeholders from feasibility through post-delivery support.\nTranslate a customer's model-development goals into an executable technical plan with clear acceptance criteria.\nOwn the implementation and operation of the engagements you lead.\nTurn Deal Work Into Product Leverage\nWork 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.\nIdentify recurring patterns that should become shared cross-vertical platform capabilities and contribute directly to designing and building them.\nBuild the audio vertical's technical playbooks and quality standards so the function scales with every new request.\nWhat Success Looks Like\n30 Days: Learn and Ship\nLearn Protege's platform, audio data landscape, active customer and partner portfolio, and current processing and delivery systems.\nPair with an engineer to work through an existing audio deal to understand what a delivery looks like at Protege.\nMap the largest gaps in the audio vertical's tooling and operating model and propose a prioritized plan for addressing them.\n60 Days: Own End-to-End\nOperate and run an active audio deal as the primary FDE.\nBuild or meaningfully extend a tool or workflow that spawns from an active customer request.\nEstablish a communication cycle with other FDEs and product to surface learnings from deals to identify areas of generalization.\n90 Days: Operate Independently\nServe as the default technical owner across the audio vertical's active portfolio, including owning multiple active deals.\nOwn end-to-end architecture and delivery for audio customers, including post-delivery support and iteration.\nEstablish the first version of the audio FDE playbook and reusable toolkit.\nMaintain a concrete roadmap of platform investments with the goal of increasing the vertical's delivery capacity.\nWhat You Bring\nMust Haves\n3+ years of experience as an engineer, including meaningful exposure to customers or external technical stakeholders.\nExperience working directly with media data, bonus points for direct work with audio data.\nExperience building and operating systems that process, analyze, or deliver data at scale.\nCustomer-facing ability, including translating ambiguous requirements, communicating trade-offs, and building trust with technical stakeholders.\nDemonstrated end-to-end ownership, from initial problem definition through implementation, validation, and support.\nHigh ambiguity tolerance and bias to action, with the judgment to know when to investigate further or push back.\nComfort with the intensity and pace of a fast-moving environment, including multiple concurrent priorities and time-sensitive customer work.\nNice to Haves\nExperience at an early-stage company, as a founding or early engineer, or in another startup-like environment with broad ownership.\nHands-on experience with Python.\nProduct engineering experience or a strong product mindset developed in close partnership with users.\nExperience with search, vector embeddings, semantic retrieval, or ML-assisted data curation.\nExperience with our cloud and data infrastructure (AWS, Dagster, Databricks, Vercel are the key tools).\nExperience with audio processing, speech or music ML, transcription, diarization, annotation, quality measurement, or privacy and redaction workflows.\nProtege Values\nPass the Loved Ones’ Test\nWe act with integrity and do the right thing - especially when it’s hard and no one is watching.\nAlways Find a Way\nWe are resourceful, resilient builders who solve hard problems and push through obstacles.\nGo Fast and Grow Fast\nVelocity matters. We move with urgency, learn quickly, and continuously improve as individuals and as a company.\nPractice Kindness and Candor\nWe communicate directly and respectfully, building trust through honest feedback and genuine care for one another.\nDeliver Together\nWe win as one team. Collaboration, accountability, and shared ownership drive our success.\nOwn the Outcome. Hone the Craft.\nWe take pride in our work, sweat the details, and continuously raise the bar for excellence.","description_format":"text","description_chars":6528,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":3,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["AI Training Data & Annotation","Health Data & Interoperability"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-08-25T13:28:54Z"},{"event":"reopen","at":"2026-10-13T04:13:12Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":76,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.845,"p_room":0.9,"age_days":58,"expected_fill_days":113,"reasons":["conf:1","win:mid"],"computed_at":"2026-10-23T05:54:15Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/protege-forward-deployed-engineer-audio","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/protege-forward-deployed-engineer-audio.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-23T19:49:18Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":1007,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-24T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":1805974},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=1805974"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fprotege-forward-deployed-engineer-audio"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fprotege-forward-deployed-engineer-audio"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fprotege-forward-deployed-engineer-audio"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/protege-forward-deployed-engineer-audio\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fprotege-forward-deployed-engineer-audio"}]}