Need Advice: How To Collect 2k Company Contacts (specific Roles) Without Doing Everything Manually?

Hi everyone, I’m facing a problem and could really use some advice from people who’ve done this before or been in similar situation.

I need to collect contact details for around 2,000 companies, but the tricky part is that I don’t need generic inboxes like info@ or support@. I specifically need contacts of responsible people (for example: Head of HR, HR Manager, CEO, Founder, or similar decision-makers). Doing this manually company by company feels almost impossible at this scale. I’m facing this challange for the first time and don’t know where to start.

I’m open to: paid tools APIs semi-automated workflows services you’ve personally used or even outsourcing ideas (if that’s realistic).

My main questions: Is this realistically automatable? Are there tools/services that actually work for role-based contacts? What should I absolutely avoid (wasting money, getting banned, bad data, etc.)? I’d really appreciate any real-world experience, tool recommendations, or warnings. Thanks in advance 🙏