Freelance Data Partnerships Lead

Company Intro

At Toloka AI we create data that powers leading GenAI models and innovations. We work with frontier labs, big tech, renowned AI startups, enterprises and non-profit research organizations worldwide. We use a combination of Experts + Crowd + Tech Platform to teach AI models to reason and evaluate their efficacy and safety. We have experts in more than 50 different domains - from doctors and lawyers to physicists and engineers—and boast one of the most diverse global crowds, representing over 100 countries and speaking 40+ languages. We are a well-funded startup with an enviable portfolio of clients including Anthropic, Amazon, Microsoft, poolside, Recraft, and Shopify.

Recently, we secured strategic investment led by Bezos Expeditions with participation from Mikhail Parakhin, CTO of Shopify and board advisor to leading GenAI companies, who now serves as our Chairman of the Board. Our remote-first team is globally distributed around the world: USA, UK, the Netherlands, Israel, Czech Republic, Serbia, and more. We are headquartered in Amsterdam.

About the Position

Toloka delivers high quality human data to frontier AI labs. We're scaling a new direction: data that comes from real businesses and real company data. You will be the person who finds these partners and gets deals signed, working alongside the partnerships PMs, delivery, legal, and sales.

This is a founding role. You are the first and for a while, the only person in this function. You inherit everything already in motion and own it end-to-end. This is a great opportunity to build the function itself.

What you'll do

• Source partners outbound. Build target lists of businesses that have never sold data before - factories, warehouses, pharmacies, retail and service businesses across world, plus data providers and aggregators who collect with their own hardware and people, and companies open to licensing their operational data.

• Open doors and pitch. Convert cold outreach and warm intros into meetings with owners, GMs, and ops leaders and sell a value prop most of them have never heard.

• Structure and close deals. Small paid pilots that scale into ongoing collection.

• Run partners through our process hand-in-hand with Legal, Finance, Sales. You'll negotiate workable structures for non-standard counterparties.

What success looks like (first 90 days)

• First 2–3 collection partners signed across at least two regions, with pilots delivering hours of usable data.

• A qualified pool of ~10 data-provider / company-dataset leads with samples evaluated; 1–2 real-company datasets brought to the term-sheet stage.

• A documented partner playbook so the motion becomes repeatable and the function can grow.

• The function has an owner: the in-flight streams consolidated under you, a clear operating cadence with all cross-functions.

What we're looking for

• 5+ years in business development, strategic partnerships, or commercial sourcing with deals you sourced and closed yourself, not inbound account management.

• You've built a function or developed a new stream from zero before and you're comfortable being the only person in it for the first months, doing the unglamorous work yourself.

• A real outbound muscle: you've built target lists, run funnels, and know your own conversion numbers.

• Negotiation range: comfortable with both an SMB owner deciding in one call and a mid-market exec with legal and procurement behind them. Experience negotiating data-, IP-, or -content-heavy contracts is a strong plus.

• 0 to 1 tolerance: no playbook, targets that form as you go, unglamorous early work. You convert chaos into process

What We Can Offer

• Contract (B2B) collaboration, with a path into a project team if things go well;

• Flexible, fully remote schedule (40 hours per week);

• Work at the leading edge of AI development, alongside a dedicated and dynamic team of experts;

• Projects with customers that are AI industry leaders and well-known household names;

• Friendly community.