Assistant Buyer Development Program - 2026 Start Dates

About the role

Burlington is looking for an Assistant Buyer to join our team. We are a rapidly growing off-price retailer centered on five tenets: innovation, quality, service, community, and integrity. Our Assistant Buyer program offers hands-on training, a supportive mentorship, and a hybrid work schedule.

Responsibilities

• Select and procure merchandise in conjunction with your Buyer in the assigned business area of responsibility to ensure customer-oriented and profitable product offerings.
• Provide operational support to the Buyer by managing business analysis and delivering insights on category performance.
• Participate in market visits/vendor appointments to select product assortments and negotiate pricing that resonates with customers and reflects strong value.
• Contribute to business growth by sharing well-informed perspectives based on competitive shopping, trend monitoring, and market performance evaluation.
• Build and nurture strong, positive "win/win" relationships with vendors.
• Influence to solve problems and follow up with orders.
• Manage a large magnitude of email streams across a diverse vendor database and communicate vendor feedback to managers.
• Maintain planned receipt flow on a consistent basis, making flow issue callouts to buyers when needed, ensuring adherence to scheduled shipping windows, and negotiating late shipping discounts.
• Strategically manage the full cycle of merchandise for your business area, including entering, updating, managing, tracking, and organizing purchase orders to ensure timely delivery, communicating late deliveries to the Buying team, setting up new vendors with routing guides and pre-ticketing information.
• Collaborate with functional areas within the department for input, ideas, and executing assignments.

Requirements

• A Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field (Merchandising and/or Business).
• Advanced proficiency in Microsoft Excel including pivot tables and VLOOKUP.
• Basic understanding of Microsoft Office programs.
• Fundamental understanding of retail math.
• Data-driven problem-solver who can build and maintain productive partnerships by living our core values.
• Ability to recognize, analyze, and quantify market trends.
• High attention to detail and listening, oral, and written communication skills.
• Affinity for retail math, product/merchandising, and building a career in Buying.
• Ability to prioritize tasks to meet deadlines and operate with a high sense of urgency.
• Ability to negotiate with vendors to acquire the best prices for customers.
• A self-starter who takes initiative with a sense of curiosity, adaptability, and courage to always be a student of the business.

Qualifications

• Ability to travel frequently / regularly as required for business related activities such as vendor appointments, trade shows, competitive shopping, etc. - mostly within the NY, NJ, and PA area.

Skills

• Ability to recognize, analyze, and quantify market trends.
• High attention to detail and listening, oral, and written communication skills.
• Affinity for retail math, product/merchandising, and building a career in Buying.
• Ability to prioritize tasks to meet deadlines and operate with a high sense of urgency.
• Ability to negotiate with vendors to acquire the best prices for customers.
• A self-starter who takes initiative with a sense of curiosity, adaptability, and courage to always be a student of the business.

Benefits

• An annual salary of $65,000 plus bonus with the eligibility for an annual performance-based merit increase.
• A benefits package with a generous PTO plan, a range of affordable health insurance options (medical, dental, vision), and a company-matched 401(k).
• Paid holidays and Early Release Fridays all year round.
• An associate discount for in-store purchases.

Pay

$65,000 annually

Schedule

Hybrid model that includes in-office, market/comp shopping, and remote days. This schedule can be subject to change.

Location

New Jersey-Burlington, 2006 Route 130 North, 08016