Partner and Vendor Specialist

Defined.ai; United States; On-site; USD 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Job summary

Defined.ai is seeking a Partner and Vendor Specialist to support data, suppliers, and vendor workflows. You will bridge Presales, Partnerships, Data, and Operations to identify external resources for customer opportunities and coordinate with partners for optimal solutions.

You’ll develop a deep understanding of our data portfolio and ecosystem, engage suppliers for information, and collaborate to determine the best fit for each opportunity.

Qualifications

• 2+ years of experience in solutions, operations, data, vendor management, partnerships, or a related field.
• Fluent professional English, both written and spoken.
• Strong research and analytical skills.
• Excellent organization and attention to detail.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Comfortable communicating directly with external suppliers, vendors, and partners.
• Ability to understand customer requirements and translate them into practical solutions.
• Ability to manage multiple opportunities and requests simultaneously.
• Experience working with CRM systems and maintaining accurate records.

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain understanding of Defined.ai's datasets and partner portfolio.
• Research datasets that align with customer requirements.
• Evaluate datasets on modality, language, geography, volume, quality, licensing, and availability.
• Recommend datasets to Presales and internal teams based on needs.
• Identify alternative datasets when needed to meet customer requirements.
• Stay informed about new datasets in the marketplace and partner ecosystem.
• Identify gaps in data supply based on recurring customer requirements.
• Communicate with data suppliers and vendors about capabilities, pricing, availability, and requirements.
• Support evaluation and qualification of new suppliers, datasets, and workflows.
• Coordinate with Partnerships for deeper supplier engagement.
• Maintain accurate supplier and vendor records and communications.
• Understand customer requirements to propose practical solutions.
• Coordinate with Presales and Solutions to develop customer-ready data/vendor solutions.
• Research resources and provide recommendations based on customer requirements, timelines, geography, quality, and budget.
• Assist in RFPs, RFIs, proposals with data and vendor capabilities.
• Help Presales identify solutions when internal capabilities don’t meet needs.
• Coordinate requests for additional information and ensure timely responses.
• Coordinate with Presales, Partnerships, Operations, and other teams during presales and post-sales.
• Support handoffs from opportunity development to project execution.
• Track outstanding questions, requirements, dependencies, and actions.
• Ensure information from opportunities is communicated to execution teams.
• Identify and resolve gaps between customer requirements and vendor capabilities.
• Maintain CRM records and ensure marketplace data is current.

Skills

Vendor management

CRM systems

Research skills

Organizational skills

Written & verbal communication

Customer requirements translation

Project coordination

Sales & presales support

Tools

Salesforce

Job description

About Defined.ai

Defined.ai is a global provider of AI data and human intelligence solutions, helping organizations build, train, and evaluate AI systems with high-quality data and human expertise.

About Defined.ai

Defined.ai is a global provider of AI data and human intelligence solutions, helping organizations build, train, and evaluate AI systems with high-quality data and human expertise.
Our solutions include off-the-shelf and partner datasets, custom data collection, annotation, transcription, evaluation, and other AI data and workflow services.

About The Role

Defined.ai is looking for a Partner and Vendor Specialist to support our growing portfolio of data, suppliers, vendors, and workflow capabilities.

This role sits at the intersection of Presales, Partnerships, Data, and Operations. The person in this role will help internal teams identify the right external resources to support customer opportunities—from off-the-shelf datasets and partner data to vendors capable of supporting specialized workflows and services.

You will develop a strong understanding of our available data and vendor ecosystem, work directly with suppliers and partners to gather information, and collaborate with Presales, Partnerships, and Operations teams to determine the best solution for each opportunity.

This is an ideal role for someone who is highly organized, commercially minded, comfortable working with external partners, and interested in the rapidly evolving AI data ecosystem.

Key Responsibilities

Data & Marketplace Solutions

• Develop and maintain a strong understanding of Defined.ai's off-the-shelf and partner dataset portfolio.
• Research and identify datasets that align with customer requirements.
• Evaluate datasets based on factors such as modality, language, geography, volume, quality, metadata, licensing, availability, and other relevant specifications.
• Recommend appropriate datasets to Presales and other internal teams based on customer requirements.
• Identify alternative datasets when an initial option does not fully satisfy a customer's needs.
• Stay informed about new datasets and capabilities available through Defined.ai's marketplace and partner ecosystem.
• Help identify gaps in our available data supply based on recurring customer requirements.

Supplier & Vendor Engagement

• Communicate directly with data suppliers and vendors to obtain additional information about their capabilities, datasets, workflows, pricing, availability, and requirements.
• Work with suppliers to clarify technical, operational, and commercial questions that arise during customer opportunities.
• Support the evaluation and qualification of new suppliers, vendors, datasets, and workflow capabilities.
• Maintain an understanding of vendor capabilities, including the types of data collection, annotation, transcription, evaluation, and other AI-related workflows they can support.
• Coordinate with the Partnerships team when opportunities require deeper supplier or vendor engagement.
• Maintain accurate records of supplier and vendor communications, capabilities, and relevant opportunity information.

Presales & Solution Development

• Work closely with Presales and Solutions teams to understand customer requirements and identify appropriate data, suppliers, and vendors.
• Support the development of solutions for customer opportunities involving third-party data or external workflow capabilities.
• Research available resources and provide recommendations based on customer requirements, timelines, geography, quality requirements, and budget.
• Support RFPs, RFIs, proposals, and other customer-facing opportunities by providing accurate information about available data and vendor capabilities.
• Help Presales teams identify potential solutions when Defined.ai's internal capabilities or marketplace inventory do not fully meet customer requirements.
• Coordinate requests for additional information and ensure responses are delivered to the appropriate internal teams.

Cross-Functional Opportunity Coordination

• Coordinate with Presales, Partnerships, Operations, and other internal stakeholders during presales and post-sales activities.
• Support handoffs from opportunity development into project execution.
• Track outstanding questions, requirements, dependencies, and actions related to suppliers, vendors, datasets, and workflows.
• Ensure relevant information gathered during an opportunity is communicated to the teams responsible for execution.
• Help identify and resolve gaps between customer requirements and available supplier/vendor capabilities.

CRM & Information Management

• Maintain accurate records of supplier and vendor communications within the CRM and other internal systems.
• Document dataset information, supplier capabilities, vendor capabilities, pricing information, availability, and other relevant details.
• Keep marketplace and supplier/vendor information current and accessible to internal teams.
• Capture information learned during customer opportunities so it can be leveraged for future opportunities.
• Help establish and maintain a reliable internal knowledge base of available data and external capabilities.

Qualifications

Required

• 2+ years of experience in solutions, operations, data, vendor management, partnerships, project coordination, or a related field.
• Fluent professional English, both written and spoken.
• Strong research and analytical skills.
• Excellent organization and attention to detail.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Comfortable communicating directly with external suppliers, vendors, and partners.
• Ability to understand customer requirements and translate them into practical solutions.
• Ability to manage multiple opportunities and requests simultaneously.
• Experience working with CRM systems and maintaining accurate records.
• Comfortable working in a fast-paced, cross-functional environment.

Preferred

• Experience working in AI, machine learning, data services, technology, or a related industry.
• Experience working with data suppliers, vendors, marketplaces, or external service providers.
• Familiarity with AI data workflows such as data collection, annotation, transcription, translation, evaluation, or benchmarking.
• Experience supporting presales, proposals, RFPs, or customer solution development.
• Familiarity with data modalities such as audio, speech, image, video, text, or multimodal data.
• Experience with Salesforce or another CRM platform.
• Experience coordinating multiple external vendors or suppliers.
• Familiarity with data licensing, dataset specifications, or data quality concepts.

What Success Looks Like

Role

Success in this role means becoming a trusted resource for the Defined.ai commercial and delivery teams when they need to answer:"Who can provide what we need?"

That may mean identifying an existing dataset in the marketplace, finding the right external supplier, identifying a vendor capable of executing a specialized workflow, or coordinating with multiple partners to develop a solution.

The successful candidate will help Defined.ai move opportunities forward faster by making it easier for internal teams to understand what resources are available, which partners can support an opportunity, and how those resources can be combined to meet customer requirements.

Core Competencies

• Resourcefulness: Able to find answers and identify potential resources when the solution is not immediately obvious.
• Data & Technology Curiosity: Interested in understanding datasets, AI workflows, and technology-enabled services.
• Partner Communication: Comfortable communicating professionally with suppliers, vendors, and partners.
• Commercial Awareness: Understands that recommendations need to consider customer requirements, cost, timing, quality, and feasibility.
• Analytical Thinking: Able to compare different data and vendor options and make informed recommendations.
• Organization: Capable of managing multiple requests, conversations, and opportunities simultaneously.
• Problem Solving: Can identify gaps and develop alternatives when an available resource does not fully meet requirements.
• Collaboration: Works effectively across Presales, Partnerships, Operations, and other teams.
• Ownership: Takes responsibility for moving requests forward and ensuring information is captured accurately.