Wholesale distribution AI platform provider Proton.ai launched an industry-wide job board Nov. 3 that aggregates employment opportunities from its distributor customers.

Called “Jobs in Distribution,” the board pulls open positions directly from participating employers’ career sites, covering jobs ranging from sales and purchasing to IT and branch leadership.

Candidates can search openings by location and seniority, compare employer-published compensation and apply through each company’s original job listing. The board also allows users to filter for positions that disclose compensation or sort openings by highest advertised pay, with hourly and salaried positions displayed separately.

Proton said it developed the offering to help its customers reach candidates specifically interested in distribution careers while giving job seekers a central location to discover companies and career paths they may not otherwise encounter.

“Our customers are hiring for jobs that people outside distribution might not think to look for,” Proton Founder and CEO Benj Cohen said. “We wanted to give distributors’ openings another place to be found.”

Unlike a broad industry job marketplace, the initial Jobs in Distribution board focuses on Proton customers. Applications continue to flow through the individual employer rather than Proton.

The job board debuted as part of Proton’s redesigned website, which also includes a distribution glossary and the company’s “In the Mind of a Distributor” podcast.

As of the launch on Nov. 3, the board showed 180 job listings from Proton customers that include major distributors MSC Industrial Supply, Johnstone Supply, R.S. Hughes, RelaDyne, Aramsco, Vallen, Benco Dental, Meier Supply, BPI and ORS Nasco.

Proton Expands Platform

The hiring offering follows a series of 2026 product expansions by Cambridge, MA-based Proton.

In July, the company launched its Order & Quote Entry Automation system, which uses AI agents to process inbound customer requests from emails, PDFs, spreadsheets and other formats. The system matches requested products to distributor catalogs, prepares quotes or orders and applies customer pricing, sourcing rules and inventory information before a sales representative reviews and approves the result.

That launch followed Proton’s March introduction of a unified “industry cloud” for wholesale distribution. The platform brings CRM, product information management, eCommerce recommendations and order automation together on a shared data layer rather than operating as disconnected point solutions.

MDM Analysis

The job board is an unusual extension for a distribution technology provider — and might be the first that we’ve seen — because its value isn’t directly tied to software functionality. Instead, Proton is creating an additional customer benefit around one of distributors’ persistent challenges: finding talent. Making it exclusive to Proton customers could also strengthen the platform’s value proposition — prospective customers aren’t only buying technology but gaining access to another recruiting channel targeted specifically at distribution. As Proton’s customer base grows, the usefulness of that network could grow with it.