On October 11, 2026 our feed held 49 live listings for customer support, operations and administrative professionals, from 8 platforms. They are two quite different kinds of work, and the difference shows up in the pay. 29 of the listings are Meridial roles that state hourly rates of $5 to $11. The 7 other listings that state an hourly rate have tops from $20 to $80, with a median of $30.
This guide separates the two groups so you can tell them apart before you apply. Every figure comes from the listings themselves.
Kind one: outsourced support and operations jobs
The largest group looks like ordinary contact-center and back-office work. 28 of those 29 listings describe supporting a financial services client's retirement-plan platform, and only one of the 30 Meridial support listings is titled an AI trainer project. The roles are:
- Customer Support Agent (6 listings, one for Spanish-English bilinguals): answering customers by phone, email and live chat about retirement plans, account integrations, activations and troubleshooting. The listing says retirement-plan experience is helpful but not mandatory.
- Customer Support L2 (5): overseeing the agents, with hands-on support too.
- Operations Associate Specialist (6), Operations Agent (1) and Implementations Operations Agent (1): validating data, reviewing documents and processing distributions and loans.
- Payroll Specialist (5): coordinating payroll-system setup during plan onboarding.
- Self Service Implementation Specialist (5): guiding plan sponsors through onboarding.
Those 29 listings state $5 an hour (19 of them), $6 an hour (5) or $8 to $11 an hour (5, the L2 roles). 28 mention a US Eastern time schedule, and 11 state 40 to 50 hours a week. They are tied to named countries: of the 30 Meridial support listings, 26 are for Colombia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Chile or Jamaica.
On requirements, the L2 listing asks for prior experience leading in a contact center or customer service environment and names Zendesk, Aircall and an internal CRM as tools. The Payroll Specialist listing says experience in operations or administrative roles is a plus but not required, and asks for a 40-hour week on US East Coast time.
Whether $5 an hour is worth it depends on local rates, and that is for you to judge. What is clear from the listings is that it is a fixed-hours support job, not flexible AI evaluation work, so compare it with other support jobs rather than with the AI training roles below.
Kind two: AI training roles that use support expertise
The second group asks you to use your support experience to shape how AI behaves.
Acting out customer conversations
SME Careers lists three Customer Service Expert roles, with stated tops of $20, $23 and $30 an hour. You take part in realistic customer service scenarios to build a dataset of natural, human-acted conversations used to train speech-to-speech AI agents, applying your experience in issue resolution, support workflows and customer relationships. All three say there is no immediate project, so you would be among the first contacted when one opens. SME Careers is SuperAnnotate's expert network.
Designing the test cases
AfterQuery lists a Customer Service Representative Expert at $55 an hour. The work is to design and evaluate customer service scenarios that test whether a model can apply complex support principles, described as creating and refining customer support challenges.micro1 lists a Customer Service Expert at $18 to $28 an hour, though its listings carry no description in our feed.
Admin and HR roles
Mercor's HR & Administration Specialist network states $60 to $80 an hour, with typical commitments of 15 to 30 hours a week. It asks for professional experience in talent acquisition and onboarding, payroll and benefits administration or HR policy and compliance, and you join after completing a profile and passing an AI interview. It is an open application for future projects, not a specific job.
Meridial's Secretaries and Administrative Specialist listing is the one AI trainer project among its support roles, and states a range of $6 to $65 an hour. You converse with a model on administrative scenarios, such as correspondence drafting, records management, travel planning, office software and confidentiality protocols, and log where it fails. A bachelor's or master's in business administration, office management or a related field is called ideal.
Handshake AI
Handshake AI lists 5 roles, among them Healthcare Administrative Professional, Claims Specialist and Technical Support Expert, with no pay stated. Three of them describe a program that runs year-round, with project opportunities opening periodically.
Roles that look like AI training but are not
Three Mercor listings are staff jobs on Mercor's own Talent Success team, which supports the people using its platform: Customer Success Operations (India), Customer Success Engineer (India) and Customer Success Engineer (Latin America). They state annual salaries of $15,000 to $30,000, $30,000 to $45,000 and $35,000 to $50,000. They are real jobs, but they are with the platform, not AI training work. Remote Talent Cloud also has 4 support and sales listings in our feed, with no pay or description.
How to tell the difference
- Check for a schedule. A fixed time zone and a weekly hours range, as in the Meridial support roles, signal an outsourced job.
- Check the rate. The AI-training listings state tops of $20 to $80 an hour.
- Check for a project. The SME Careers and Mercor listings say they are standing lists, so expect to wait.
The catches
- Most pay figures are low and fixed. The biggest group is $5 to $11 an hour.
- Many roles are location-bound. 12 of the 49 listings state no country restriction. The rest name countries, so check yours first.
- Some listings have no pay. The Handshake AI, Remote Talent Cloud and Welo Data listings state none, so you cannot compare them.
Common questions
Do I need machine-learning knowledge?
The SME Careers, AfterQuery and Meridial listings ask for professional experience in support, operations or administration, and none of them mentions machine learning.
Which role pays best?
On stated rates, Mercor's HR & Administration network ($60 to $80) and AfterQuery's Customer Service Representative Expert ($55) are highest, and the Meridial support roles are lowest. Compare them on the pay report.
How current is this?
This is a snapshot from October 11, 2026. Listings change daily. The live roles are on our customer support page.