Retail Subject Matter Expert

Job Title: Retail Subject Matter Expert (SME)
Location: Remote (Anywhere in the US)
Hire Type: Contract (Part-Time)
Duration: 6 Months+

Role Overview:
We are seeking an experienced Retail Subject Matter Expert (SME) with creative thinking and problem-solving skills to join our client's AI training and model development team. The ideal candidate will bring deep expertise in the retail sector - including operations, merchandising, supply chain, store management, and customer experience - and will help train, evaluate, and fine-tune AI models to ensure accuracy, domain relevance, and contextual understanding.
You will work cross functional teams of data scientists, AI engineers, and product teams to build intelligent retail solutions such as virtual assistants, demand forecasting tools, and customer insight engines.

Key Responsibilities:
Serve as the retail domain expert during the training and fine-tuning of AI models, ensuring contextual accuracy and industry relevance
Develop knowledge bases, taxonomies, and ontologies that reflect retail industry standards and best practices
Annotate, label, and validate datasets with domain-specific knowledge (product categories, inventory terms, pricing, promotions, etc.)
Collaborate with AI/ML engineers to design training data strategies, evaluation metrics, and prompt engineering techniques tailored to retail applications
Provide expert feedback on model outputs, identifying errors, ambiguities, and opportunities to improve model reasoning and performance
Partner with product and analytics teams to align AI capabilities with business objectives such as improving sales, forecasting demand, or enhancing customer engagement
Stay current with emerging trends in retail technology and AI, bringing innovative ideas for practical implementation.

Required Qualifications:
Bachelor s or Master s degree in Business, Retail Management, Supply Chain, Data Analytics, or related field
10 years of experience in the retail sector (e.g., merchandising, operations, category management, supply chain, or e-commerce)
Proven ability to translate business processes into structured data requirements
Strong analytical and communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex retail concepts for technical and non-technical teams
Familiarity with retail data systems such as ERP, POS, CRM, or inventory management software is a plus.