Director, DataLab Research & AI Data Strategy

Protege; New City (NY); On-site; USD 180,000 - 300,000; Full time

Job summary

Protege seeks a Head of Research to lead DataLab, shaping the research agenda around data for AI and influencing product direction. You will manage a high-performing team, translate complex questions into actionable experiments, and partner with Product, Engineering, GTM, and Leadership to deliver measurable impact for customers and strategic initiatives.

You will drive experimentation rigor, publish findings, and stay at the forefront of AI/data infrastructure—playing a pivotal role in

Qualifications

• Led impactful research initiatives in AI, machine learning, data infrastructure, or applied research environments where outcomes influenced product or business strategy.
• Developed frameworks for evaluating model performance, dataset quality, synthetic data, or large-scale experimentation systems.
• Experience partnering with customers, GTM, or external stakeholders to translate research into practical business value.

Responsibilities

• Define and lead the Data Lab research strategy aligned with company priorities and product direction.
• Partner with Product, Engineering, and GTM to identify high-value research opportunities.
• Design and oversee experiments for data quality, model performance, and privacy-preserving methods.
• Build scalable benchmarking and evaluation systems across multiple AI modalities.
• Serve as a customer-facing research partner to GTM and translate research depth into actionable recommendations.
• Publish internal research findings to influence product decisions and platform capabilities.
• Lead, manage, and scale a high-performing team of researchers and data scientists.

Skills

Leadership

AI research

Data science

Experiment design

Cross-functional collaboration

Hiring & mentoring

Python

LLM evaluation

Tools

Python

PyTorch

TensorFlow

Job description

Protege seeks a Head of Research to lead DataLab, shaping the research agenda around data for AI and influencing product direction. You will manage a high-performing team, translate complex questions into actionable experiments, and partner with Product, Engineering, GTM, and Leadership to deliver measurable impact for customers and strategic initiatives.

You will drive experimentation rigor, publish findings, and stay at the forefront of AI/data infrastructure—playing a pivotal role in