Business & Sales Operations Domain Expert

What you'll do

This is one of the most job-like listings on Mercor: a full-time, six-month W-2 placement embedded with a leading AI lab's research and program management teams in the Bay Area. The lab wants a practising operator to improve how its models reason about real business operations work.

Four strands of work:

• Data QA and review: vet operations tasks and model outputs for missing steps, thin reasoning, flawed assumptions, numbers that do not tie out, and answers that sound fine but would not survive an operating review
• Instruction specs and golden datasets: write precise task specs, produce model-grade solutions, and define new tasks that mirror how ops work is really done
• Benchmarks: design hard evaluation sets and help build domain-specific skills and tools with the researchers
• Calibration: work with researchers and adjacent specialists to turn tacit operating judgment into explicit, teachable criteria

You work inside the client's own tools on client-issued accounts and equipment, which is a very different setup from task-queue contracting.

Who fits

• 4+ years owning a business, revenue or sales operations function at a recognized organization; quota-carrying sales roles without ops ownership do not count
• Clear progression to a senior level (Manager up to Director, VP, COO or President) with real ownership of a function, budget or team
• Specialization in at least one area: sales ops and territory or quota design, RevOps and forecasting, CRM and GTM systems, pricing and deal desk, supply chain and inventory planning, business analytics, or process improvement
• A bachelor's degree; an MBA or equivalent is strongly preferred
• Hands-on professional use of LLMs, and the judgment to spot a plausible but wrong answer
• 40 hours a week for an initial six months
• Excellent written feedback skills

Location: read this first

This is a hybrid role in the Bay Area, California, and the ad is blunt that it is not remote. You must live in the Bay Area and work on-site with the client team multiple days a week when required. If you live elsewhere, you must relocate at your own cost before starting; no relocation help is offered.

What it pays

$60–100 per hour, Mercor's published figure. At 40 hours a week that is roughly $125,000–208,000 annualized, before considering benefits. Employment runs through Cincinnatus LLC, a staffing firm that acts as employer of record and handles W-2 payroll, benefits and compliance. Payment frequency and method are not published on the listing.

Worth knowing

Good:

• W-2 employment with benefits through Cincinnatus, not contractor status
• Embedded with a frontier lab's research team on its own tools
• Covers a wide range of ops specialisms, from deal desk to supply chain
• A defined six-month initial term at full-time hours

Less good:

• Must live in, or relocate at your own cost to, the Bay Area
• Multiple on-site days a week when required
• Pay band is wide; placement criteria are not stated
• Individual sales roles without ops ownership are excluded
• Nothing is said about what happens after the initial six months

About this listing

Posted by Mercor as a full-time position in the Bay Area with a US location requirement, confirmed open on 24 September 2026. Employment is with Cincinnatus LLC, a separate legal entity from Mercor. Pay, qualifications and location terms are the ad's own. See Mercor.