About the job Remote | Senior Retail Strategy & Operations Specialist — $55–$75/hour
We are sharing a specialised full-time consulting opportunity for US-based senior retail professionals with deep experience in merchandising, category management, buying, planning, retail operations, and structured evaluation of AI-generated outputs.
This role supports a high-impact generative AI initiative focused on improving how advanced models reason through real-world retail challenges. Selected professionals will design rigorous retail tasks, evaluate model outputs against structured criteria, develop scoring frameworks, and provide practical feedback grounded in senior-level merchandising, category, planning, and operational experience.
Key Responsibilities
Retail Strategy & Domain Guidance
- Guide research and engineering teams on merchandising, category management, assortment planning, buying, and retail operations
- Identify gaps in model understanding across pricing, inventory, promotions, customer demand, store performance, and commercial planning
- Apply practical retail judgment to complex scenarios involving products, channels, suppliers, customers, and financial objectives
- Ensure retail tasks reflect realistic business decisions and current industry practices
Retail Task & Solution Development
- Design challenging, domain-relevant tasks grounded in real retail practice
- Write accurate, well-reasoned solutions covering merchandising, category, buying, planning, and operational scenarios
- Develop problems requiring commercial judgment, prioritisation, data interpretation, and evaluation of competing trade-offs
- Ensure tasks are clear, internally consistent, and suitable for structured assessment
AI Output Evaluation
- Evaluate AI-generated retail responses against established rubrics and scoring criteria
- Assess correctness, commercial judgment, reasoning quality, relevance, and practical applicability
- Compare alternative outputs and determine which response provides the stronger retail recommendation
- Identify factual errors, unsupported assumptions, weak commercial reasoning, and incomplete conclusions
- Provide clear written feedback that supports improvements in model behaviour
Rubric Development & Quality Calibration
- Develop and refine evaluation guidelines for merchandising, category management, planning, and retail operations tasks
- Define scoring criteria covering technical accuracy, commercial judgment, reasoning, and execution feasibility
- Participate in calibration activities with other retail specialists
- Collaborate across teams to maintain consistency and accuracy throughout the training data
Ideal Profile
Strong candidates may have:
- At least 8 years of dedicated professional experience in retail
- Senior-level expertise in merchandising, category management, buying, planning, retail operations, or a related area
- Experience working within a recognised retailer, consumer brand, e-commerce platform, or comparable organisation
- Prior hands-on experience evaluating LLM or AI-generated outputs using structured rubrics or scoring criteria
- Demonstrable career progression into senior manager, director, vice president, or comparable leadership responsibilities
- Strong commercial judgment and the ability to assess complex retail decisions
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills
- Reliable availability for at least 35 hours per week during weekdays
Educational Background
- A degree in business administration, retail management, merchandising, supply chain, marketing, economics, or a related field is highly relevant
- Graduate-level education in business, strategy, operations, analytics, or management may be helpful
- Equivalent senior professional experience in retail strategy or operations may also be considered
- Professional training in category management, merchandising analytics, procurement, or commercial planning may be valuable
Nice to Have
- Experience working with large-scale retailers, global consumer brands, or high-growth e-commerce businesses
- Background in omnichannel retail, marketplace operations, inventory planning, or store operations
- Experience creating structured scoring rubrics, evaluation guidelines, or quality frameworks
- Familiarity with model training, human-feedback workflows, annotation, or AI quality assurance
- Strong understanding of pricing, assortment, promotions, forecasting, inventory, and margin management
- Experience reviewing category plans, buying strategies, merchandising proposals, or operational performance reports
- Previous collaboration with product, analytics, supply chain, marketing, finance, or technical teams
Why This Opportunity
- Apply senior retail expertise to an advanced generative AI initiative
- Influence how AI systems reason about merchandising, category management, and retail operations
- Design and assess challenging retail problems grounded in practical commercial experience
- Collaborate with technical teams and experienced retail specialists
- Join a full-time remote engagement with competitive hourly compensation
Contract Details
- Full-time W-2 contingent employment arrangement
- Fully remote role available to candidates based in the United States
- Expected commitment of at least 35 hours per week during weekdays
- Competitive rates between $55–$75 per hour depending on expertise and project scope
- Prior experience evaluating AI or LLM outputs against structured rubrics is required
- Applicants should clearly describe relevant AI evaluation experience in their application
- Immediate availability is preferred
- Work may include onboarding, specialty calibration, task development, and ongoing quality review
- Project scope and duration may be adjusted according to programme requirements and performance
About the Platform
This opportunity is available through 24-MAG LLC. We connect experienced professionals with remote consulting opportunities across technical, evaluation, and project-based workstreams.
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