Flexport's mission is to make global trade easier for everybody. We are connecting humanity in a seamless web of global trade with our unique blend of software, human expertise, and physical infrastructure.

Our platform connects all the roles in the supply chain to improve the user experience and drive down transaction costs of international logistics, while helping companies make more data-driven decisions about where, when and what products to ship.

Build the Operating System for Global Trade

The opportunity:

Flexport is a platform for global trade in an industry that comprises 12% of the global GDP.  We are the first licensed freight forwarder and customs brokerage built around a modern tech stack.  We help the world's fastest-growing brands manage their international supply chains, providing a fully-managed service for moving products between any two places on the planet.

Exceptional software development is integral in allowing us to fulfill our mission of fixing the user experience in global trade. At Flexport you’ll develop products that are at the forefront of reshaping the entire logistics & supply chain industries. You’ll work alongside self-starters interested in solving real-world problems and streamlining the inefficiencies in the complex global trade industry. You’ll have the opportunity to reshape an industry by creating the new operating system for global trade.

The Ops Tools team is responsible for building the services that freight forwarders use to move goods around the world. We study the work that people do in freight forwarding, develop software and processes to make it more efficient, and ultimately automate much of it. The role involves learning the business of freight forwarding, modeling the work that people do to move freight, designing solutions to make it more efficient, and automating much of it. As a Staff Engineer, you will be responsible for architecting and leading projects that cut across multiple teams. You will be a mentor for other engineers and will help define the long-term roadmap for your team.

We are looking for engineers who love learning, are passionate about collaborating, and desire to build solutions with a global impact. This role will be located in San Francisco, CA.

You will:

• Craft the architectural strategy, and own the technical landscape, for a major domain in the world of logistics that powers global trade.
• Design systems that represent the real-world intricacies of logistics entities, such as cargo, routing, customs, and pricing.
• Work closely with business partners and product managers to distill complex business problems into elegant technical solutions.
• Build and launch products rapidly and incrementally. We ship to production dozens of times per day.
• Geek out about shipping and logistics. (We do this often.)
• You play a significant role in the career development of others, actively mentoring and educating the larger software engineering community on trends, technologies, and best practices.
• Model business processes to ingest costs and variances, understanding root cause, analyzing discrepancies, automating remedies / disputes to detect and stop financial leakage.
• Design simple solutions to onboard partners to broaden financial visibility coverage. Create services to automate business processes and consolidate them into central logic hubs.
• Drive data accuracy architecture and improvement loops through various subsystems.

What you’ll build:

• Determine, in real-time, the cost to move freight between any two points in the world.
• Automate archaic filing processes and save the operations team thousands of phone calls per week.
• Deliver supply chain insights to logistics teams via a world-class analytics experience.
• Predict capacity on container ships and match cargo to space on those ships.
• Bring trade to everyone in the world.

You should have:

Basic Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience writing software, and a strong engineering background.
• Experience building large scale, high-performance systems in a complex, multi-tiered, distributed environment
• Knowledge of at least one programming language such as Ruby, C, C++, Java, or Kotlin
• 5+ years of design and architecture knowledge as well as familiarity with object-oriented analysis and design patterns (OOA/OOD)
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related technical field, or equivalent experience

Preferred Qualifications

• A love of simple, well-tested code that is easy to extend and hard to break.
• The ability to convey technical ideas in common terms to business partners, product managers, and engineers alike.
• Understanding of performance tradeoffs, load balancing and operational issues
• Demonstrated ability to mentor junior software engineers in all aspects of their engineering skill-sets
• Knowledge of professional software engineering practices & best practices for full software development life cycle, including coding standards, code reviews, source control management, continuous deployments, testing, and operations
• Non-optional : an aptitude for learning quickly.

Engineering Culture and Values:

Check out our Key Values profile.

About Flexport:

We believe global trade can move the human race forward. That’s why it’s our mission to make global trade easier for everyone. We aim to do this by building the Operating System for Global trade - a strategic model combining advanced technology and data analytics, logistics infrastructure, and supply chain expertise. Flexport today connects almost 10,000 clients and suppliers across 109 countries, including established global brands like Georgia-Pacific as well as emerging innovators like Sonos. Started in 2013, we've raised over $1.3B in funding from SoftBank Vision Fund, Founders Fund, GV, First Round Capital and Y Combinator. We’re excited about the three big ways we’re moving forward after our recent $1B investment from SoftBank Vision Fund in February 2019.

Worried about not having any freight forwarding experience? Don’t be! We’re building the first Operating System for Global Trade. That’s why it’s incredibly important for us to bring people from diverse backgrounds and experiences together with our industry veterans to help move the freight forwarding industry forward.

What’s freight forwarding and why does it matter? Freight forwarding is the coordination and shipment of goods from one place to another and it’s what makes global trade possible. Flexport is on a mission to make global trade easier for everyone because we believe it can help connect the world and break down economic barriers. We know this industry is complex. That’s why we invest in education starting day one with Flexport Academy, a one week intensive onboarding program designed specifically to set every new Flexport employee up for success.

At Flexport, our ability to fulfill our mission of making global trade easy for everyone relies on having a diverse, dedicated and engaged workforce. That is why Flexport is committed to creating and nurturing an environment where anyone can be their authentic self. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, physical and mental disability, health status, marital and family status, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, military and veteran status, and any other characteristic protected by applicable law.

Our continuous releases are integrated with Buildkite and Github. On the frontend, we create our views with React, manage the flow of data with GraphQL/Relay, and test our application with Jest. On the backend, we’re in the process of decoupling our monolithic Rails app and introducing services using other languages, such as Java, Node.js and Go. Our data is persisted in mostly Postgres and Redis. Our stack is hosted on AWS using Docker.