Confidential mandate
E-commerce Returns Redesign Director — Consulting
Planned Hiring / New
A marketplace commissions a four-month returns redesign covering prevention, pickup, grading, refund, recovery and seller accountability across high-loss fashion and electronics categories through a controlled pilot.
The mandate
The defined problem is high return loss without a shared view of preventable demand, customer friction, grading leakage and seller accountability. Category and operations teams optimise different parts of the journey.
The output is an order-to-recovery baseline, reason-code repair, prevention portfolio, target reverse journey, seller policy design, two-category pilot and scaled benefits case.
Milestone one arrives 15 October 2026 with reconciled baseline; milestone two on 30 November with target controls and pilot design; milestone three on 15 January 2027 with eight-week results, policy decisions and rollout roadmap.
The Returns Council accepts when finance reconciles net loss within two percent, reason-code accuracy improves on audited samples, pilot loss falls twelve percent without worsening refund time or complaints, and seller policy passes legal review.
The marketplace provides order, listing, reason, pickup, grading, refund, resale, seller and complaint data plus access to one return centre. Fashion and electronics leaders nominate pilot cohorts.
Why this is external work
No function owns the whole economic journey, and current measures shift cost across teams. An external team can trace one unit from listing through recovery without defending a local metric. Specialist capacity is required only through pilot proof.
What you will own
- Reconcile gross returns, logistics, refund, grading and recovery value.
- Audit reason accuracy and identify preventable demand for milestone one.
- Design listing, fit, fraud and policy prevention actions.
- Redesign pickup, inspection, grading and customer communication.
- Define seller evidence, dispute and consequence rules.
- Run matched fashion and electronics pilot cohorts.
- Deliver milestone-three results, policy choices and rollout case.
Candidate qualifications
- 18–22 years in e-commerce, retail operations, reverse logistics or marketplace risk.
- Direct redesign of returns across customer, seller and fulfilment boundaries.
- Evidence of reducing net loss without harming legitimate customer experience.
- Experience auditing reason and grading data against physical samples.
- Strong seller-policy and reverse-economics capability.
- Ability to design controlled category pilots.
Non-negotiables
- No logistics-provider or returns-software commission.
- Director onsite for return-centre audits and pilot reviews.
- Customer metrics remain acceptance guardrails alongside loss.
- Client-owned data and models throughout.
- 49 words maximum. Which returns redesign reduced net loss, and what customer guardrail prevented a false saving?
- 49 words maximum. How would you audit reason codes and grading against physical returns?
- 49 words maximum. Which order, seller and recovery fields must be available for milestone one?
This mandate is confidential. The client is named only under a mutual NDA, and your own record is never listed, sold or shown to a company under your name until you release it for this specific mandate.