Why do the electron and the proton have the same charge except for the opposite signs?

Given the view of the Standard Model where the electron and quarks are just completely separate matter fields, there is at first sight no clear theoretical requirement for that.

As mentioned e.g. at QED and the men who made it: Dyson, Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga by Silvan Schweber (1994) chapter 1.6 "Hole theory", Dirac initially wanted to think of the holes in his hole theory as the protons, as a way to not have to postulate a new particle, the positron, and as a way to "explain" the proton in similar terms. Others however soon proposed arguments why the positron would need to have the same mass, and this idea had to be discarded.