---
title: 'Director, Engagement at Proto'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/director-engagement-proto-new-york-new-york-81xas576sk6b'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-10'
---

# Director, Engagement at Proto

- **Company:** Proto
- **Location:** New York New York, United States
- **Posted:** 2026-08-13
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/proto/jobs/6143559004

## Job description

Director, Engagement

Our Engagement team plays a pivotal and strategic role in our consultancy’s operations to deliver great work, build long-term client relationships, and drive business results. This team creates the conditions for success by inventing new processes and systems, bringing operational rigor, and architecting relationships built on trust. They understand the unique needs and motivations of our clients and our internal teams and continuously identify ways to advocate for both, ensuring projects are successful, on time and of unrivaled quality.

As a Director, Engagement, you are a senior client and delivery leader responsible for overseeing complex engagements and building trusted client relationships. You balance the big picture with day-to-day delivery, ensuring teams are set up for success while identifying opportunities to deepen relationships and grow our impact.

You bring strong commercial judgment and operational rigor, anticipating the needs of clients and teams while providing leadership and guidance to more junior members of the Engagement team.

What you will do:

- Lead complex, multidisciplinary client engagements, overseeing the overall approach, delivery, financial health, team needs and dynamics and client relationship from start to finish.
- Build trusted relationships with senior client stakeholders, becoming a strategic partner who understands their business, identifies and anticipates needs and helps connect those needs to opportunities for Proto.
- Translate complex client challenges into thoughtful engagement approaches, scopes of work, proposals, timelines and budgets that set teams up for successful delivery.
- Oversee multiple projects or workstreams, ensuring teams are appropriately staffed, risks are anticipated and the quality of the work remains consistently high.
- Partner closely with discipline leads and Partners to make casting, process, financial and delivery recommendations across engagements.
- Serve as a senior escalation point for clients and internal teams, navigating ambiguity and difficult situations with sound judgment, clarity and calm.
- Identify opportunities to deepen and grow existing client relationships, partnering with senior leadership to shape follow-on work and new opportunities.
- Maintain a strong understanding of the commercial health of engagements, including scope, budgets, resourcing, profitability and potential risks.
- Negotiate scopes, proposals, timelines and budgets with senior internal and external stakeholders.
- Provide leadership, coaching and guidance to members of the Engagement team, helping strengthen their client management, commercial and delivery capabilities.
- Continuously improve the systems, processes and ways of working that support successful engagements across Proto.
- Represent Proto confidently with senior clients and demonstrate curiosity about their businesses, industries, and evolving challenges.

Qualifications:

- 8–12 years of experience leading complex digital, brand, product, service, innovation and/or transformation engagements, preferably within a consultancy, branding, innovation or corporate strategy environment.
- High EQ and strong situational awareness, with the ability to navigate challenging situations with tact and sound judgment.
- Sets and maintains a high bar for engagement craft and quality, never settling for the status quo.
- Skilled at managing up, anticipating needs and bringing a calm, pragmatic and solutions-oriented approach under pressure.
- Strong executive communication skills, with the ability to distill complexity and communicate with clarity and confidence.
- Experience building, managing and growing relationships with senior stakeholders and C-level executives.
- Proven ability to navigate ambiguity, anticipate risk, and lead both clients and internal teams through complex engagements.
- Strong communication and leadership skills, with experience mentoring and developing others, directly on the engagement team and supporting craft and growth outside of immediate discipline..
- Comfortable working with collaboration tools and communication platforms (Slack, Google Suite, Figma, Teams, etc.);
- Must be willing to travel at least 25%.

In New York City, the base salary for this position is $160-175K. Individual compensation varies based on job-related factors including years of relevant skills and experience, level of responsibility, and qualifications. This position reports into our Chief Client Officer.

Proto is a New York based company with offices at 120 Broadway. Our staff is encouraged to work-from-office on days of their choosing based on personal preferences, collaboration moments, client meetings, and all-company gatherings. Our core business hours are generally 9:30am-6:00pm EST; however, due to our client service model and collaborative working culture, individual working hours fluctuate to reflect client deadlines and deliverables.

Interested in applying? Right this way.

## About Proto

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Proto provides inclusive AI workflows for emerging markets, specializing in sovereign AI solutions for regulators, public services, and enterprises.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series A)
- **Headquarters**: Waterloo, Canada (with regional hubs in Kigali, Rwanda and Bonifacio Global City, Philippines)
- **Founded**: 2018
- **Founders**: Curtis Matlock (CEO), with co-founders Noella Dushime, Nino Columna, Weiying Kok, and Andy Jung

## Core Business
- **Primary industries**: AI, government technology, financial services, healthcare, telecommunications
- **Target customers**: B2B – central banks, government agencies, healthcare providers, financial institutions, telcos; primarily in emerging markets (Africa, Southeast Asia)
- **Mission**: “Deploy inclusive AI workflows” and “ensure equal access to AI regardless of language, income or geography”

## Products & Services
- **Proto AI Agent**: Multilingual, multimodal AI agent for customer engagement, grievance redress, scam reporting, and dispute resolution. Supports voice, text, and local languages. Deployed on sovereign infrastructure.
- **Inbox Co-pilot**: AI-powered mediation and translation tool that resolves disputes by training on conversation history.
- **Insight Advisor**: Analytics and emotion analysis engine that generates actionable insights from customer interactions and workspace data.
- **Embedded Advisors & Co-pilots**: Customizable AI assistants for regulated entities (HIPAA, GDPR, SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001 compliant).

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total funding – Series A raised in 2022 (amount not publicly disclosed). Processes over 35 million AI interactions across 20+ languages as of 2025.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Gates Foundation, Government of Canada, African Development Bank, National Bank of Rwanda, Central Bank of the Philippines, The Medical City, PhilCare, FINCA. Accelerator alumni of NextAI and Creative Destruction Lab. Recognized by Inclusive Fintech 50 (Visa, MetLife, IFC, Accion) and G20 TechSprint.
- **Growth Signals**: Expanded into Sub-Saharan Africa (2021), partnered with Gates Foundation and Canada’s government for national AI systems (2024), recognized by G20 TechSprint for grievance redress work (2025). Focus on anti-scam, patient experience, and insight advisor use cases (2026).

## Competitive Advantages
- **Sovereign AI deployments**: Models run on dedicated, locally hosted infrastructure, appealing to governments and regulated entities.
- **Local language support**: Covers low-resource and mixed languages (e.g., Tagalog, Kinyarwanda) that major AI platforms ignore.
- **Security & compliance**: SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, ISO 27001, GDPR – critical for public sector and healthcare clients.
- **Reverse innovation**: Builds and proves AI in emerging markets before redeploying in developed economies.
- **Deep domain expertise**: Focus on grievance redress, financial inclusion, and patient experience – niche but high-impact.

## Strategic Focus
- **Current priorities**: Anti-scam center, patient experience optimization, and Insight Advisor use cases to maximize social impact.
- **Growth direction**: Scaling sovereign AI across more low- and middle-income countries, deepening partnerships with central banks and health ministries.

## Why Work Here
- **Remote-first**: Full remote work from anywhere with stable internet.
- **Culture & values**: Strong emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion; refugee-friendly hiring; global team spanning Asia, Africa, and North America.
- **Compensation & perks**: High & equal salaries (location-adjusted), stock options for leadership roles, visa support, tech device reimbursement, and company retreats.
- **Impact**: Work on projects that directly improve financial inclusion, healthcare access, and citizen engagement in underserved communities.
- **Engineering culture**: Multinational team led by NLP experts; focus on practical AI for real-world constraints (low bandwidth, local languages).

## Sources
1. [proto.cx/careers](https://www.proto.cx/careers)
2. [proto.cx](https://www.proto.cx/)
3. [proto.cx/about](https://www.proto.cx/about)
4. [LinkedIn](https://ca.linkedin.com/company/proto-cx)
5. [FlexJobs](https://www.flexjobs.com/remote-jobs/company/protocx)

## Other roles at Proto

- [Director, Experience Design](https://feeny.ai/job/director-experience-design-proto-new-york-new-york-tgmbnqwf59pm) — New York New York, United States
- [Director, Product Strategy](https://feeny.ai/job/director-product-strategy-proto-new-york-new-york-ngg0a7bvr0f3) — New York New York, United States
- [Personal Assistant](https://feeny.ai/job/personal-assistant-proto-remote-6xkfdvsk03h2)
- [Director, Marketing & Communications Strategy](https://feeny.ai/job/director-marketing-communications-strategy-proto-new-york-new-york-kzrax7wc8rfz) — New York New York, United States
- [General Applications](https://feeny.ai/job/general-applications-proto-new-york-new-york-1dbvpexwj0h4) — New York New York, United States