Merchandising / Category Managers Specialist

Design and evaluate retail scenarios and benchmark solutions for merchandising.

About Turing  
Turing is one of the world’s fastest-growing AI companies, accelerating the advancement and deployment of powerful AI systems.

Turing helps customers in two ways: Working with the world’s leading AI labs to advance frontier model capabilities in thinking, reasoning, coding, agentic behavior, multimodality, multilinguality, STEM, and frontier knowledge; and leveraging that work to build real-world AI systems that solve mission-critical priorities for companies.

Role Overview

We are looking for a Merchandising & Category Management Subject Matter Expert (SME) to design, evaluate, and calibrate high-fidelity domain tasks, retail scenarios, and benchmark solutions.

Depending on your depth of retail experience, candidates will be considered for an Expert Contributor (Merchandising / Category Manager) or a Senior Specialist / Reviewer (Senior Merchandising / Category Manager) track within our functional evaluation pods.

Requirements

• Experience: 3–15 years of hands-on experience in retail merchandising, buying, category management, or inventory allocation.

• Core Competencies:

  • Demonstrated expertise in assortment architecture, product allocation, and merchandise financial planning.

  • Practical experience creating and analyzing assortment plans, visual planograms, and promotional calendars.

  • Strong command of foundational retail calculations (GMROI, turn, markdowns, margin impact, weeks of supply).

• Execution & Communication:

  • Proven ability to work under peer review, adapt quickly to calibration feedback, and adhere to structured rubrics.

  • Strong written communication skills to articulate clear solution rationales and step-by-step methodology breakdowns.

Responsibilities

• Benchmark Task Authoring: Design realistic, high-difficulty retail exercises, assortment planning scenarios, promotional strategy models, and planogram challenges with gold-standard solution sets.

• Rubric Application & Scoring: Apply evaluation rubrics established by the Functional SME (Expert) Lead to systematically assess and score retail planning submissions.

• Review & Calibration: Participate in peer calibration sessions, incorporate structured feedback, iterate on task designs, and help resolve edge cases in retail math or allocation logic.

• Commercial Modeling: Build and evaluate scenarios incorporating core retail KPIs, including sell-through rates, GMROI, open-to-buy (OTB), margin mix, and inventory turnover.

Education & Experience

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience in any field.
• Experience in AI evaluation, data annotation, content review, quality assurance, or a related analytical role is preferred but not required.

Offer Details:

• Commitments Required: at least 4 hours per day and upto 40 hours per week with 4 hours of overlap with PST.
• Engagement type: Contractor
• Engagement Length:  12 weeks

Evaluation Process -

• Applicants needs to submit Job Interest Form & complete the assessment.
• Final selected candidates will be contacted with the next steps and onboarding requirements.

Skills: Customer Interaction