Retail Specialist

What you'll do

The retail twin of Mercor's Marketing Specialist listing, at the same pay and on the same terms. A leading AI lab wants experienced retail people to put real merchant judgment into its training data.

• Help research and engineering teams close gaps in how models reason about merchandising, category management and store or supply operations
• Design difficult retail tasks and write accurate, well-reasoned solutions grounded in real practice
• Score AI outputs against structured rubrics and give written feedback on correctness, judgment and reasoning
• Develop and refine retail-specific evaluation guidelines and rubrics
• Calibrate with other subject-matter experts

Retail reasoning is full of trade-offs a model can gloss over: an assortment cut that improves margin but breaks a key value item, an open-to-buy plan that ignores lead times, a promotion that looks good on sell-through and bad on markdown. Those are the kinds of gaps the rubric work is meant to expose.

Who fits

• 8+ years in retail (merchandising, category management, retail operations, buying or planning) at a top-tier organization; the ad cites Amazon, Walmart, Target, Nike, Costco and Home Depot
• Mandatory: prior hands-on experience evaluating LLM or AI outputs against rubrics or structured criteria, described in your application
• Clear progression, for example Category Manager to Senior Manager to Director of Merchandising
• At least 35 hours a week, reliably, on weekdays
• Good communication, problem-solving and interpersonal skills

As with the marketing version, the AI evaluation requirement is the hard gate. Senior merchants rarely have it, so anyone who does should make it the first thing a reviewer sees.

What it pays

$60–80 per hour, identical to the sibling Marketing Specialist listing.

How the engagement is structured

The body describes a W-2 employment position with Cincinnatus LLC, placed with the lab's extended workforce; the header says part-time. The Mercor footer on the same page describes independent contracting with weekly Stripe or Wise payment. Confirm which applies before signing.

Worth knowing

Good:

• Merchant and category expertise is valued directly
• Substantial weekly hours
• Task design and rubric writing, not just rating

Less good:

• US residents only
• 8+ years at a major retailer plus prior AI rubric work, both required
• 35+ weekday hours is hard to fit around a retail job
• Conflicting W-2 and contractor terms on the page
• H-1B and STEM OPT holders are excluded, per the Mercor footer

About this listing

Posted by Mercor as a part-time position with a US location requirement, confirmed open on 24 September 2026. Pay, hours and requirements are the ad's own. See Mercor.