About this role
About Flexport: At Flexport, we believe global trade can move the human race forward. That’s why it’s our mission to make global commerce so easy there will be more of it. We’re shaping the future of a $10T industry with solutions powered by innovative technology and exceptional people. Today, companies of all sizes—from emerging brands to Fortune 500s—use Flexport technology to move more than $19B of merchandise across 112 countries a year. The recent global supply chain crisis has put Flexport center stage as we continue to play a pivotal role in how goods move around the world. We are proud to have the support of the best investors in the game who believe in our mission, solutions and people. Ready to tackle global challenges that impact business, society, and the environment? Come join us. Senior Applied AI Engineer, Autonomous Supply Chains About Flexport Look around you. Almost everything in the room crossed an ocean to get there. Moving one container from a factory to a warehouse takes 10 to 15 companies: truckers, customs brokers, port terminals, ocean carriers, insurers, lenders and warehouses, each with its own systems, paperwork and rules. A freight forwarder runs that whole journey, so the brand that makes the goods doesn't have to. Most forwarders still run it on email, spreadsheets and phone calls. We call it email freight forwarding. Flexport runs it on one platform, where AI agents do the routine work and experts step in where judgment matters. We've moved $175B of goods for more than 13,000 brands across 135 countries. Our agents handle 21 million tasks a year, and up to 80% of customs work is automated. Global logistics is a $13 trillion industry, and even the largest forwarder earns less than 3% of global logistics outsourcing revenue. People-powered operations don't scale: to grow, you hire. Software broke that ceiling for taxis with Uber, and for payments with Adyen and Stripe. Freight is next. Amsterdam is one of Flexport's six engineering hubs, alongside San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Shanghai and Shenzhen. We own four domains end to end: Customs Technology, Autonomous Supply Chains (Applied AI), Platform and Security. See what we build at amsterdam-engineering.flexport.com. The team: Autonomous Supply Chains Logistics is famously hard to automate, because the happy path rarely happens. One customer won't take deliveries on a Tuesday. Another wants invoices only on Fridays, with some lines merged and others renamed. Until recently, people handled all of that by hand. Now operators use Forge, the agentic platform we build, to automate their own work: catching anomalies, routing exceptions, escalating stuck containers and adjusting invoices to each customer. Forge remembers every customer's rules and learns from every workflow run, so it gets smarter every day. Autonomous Supply Chains is our Applied AI team: small, senior and reporting to the VP of Engineering. Self-driving cars are rated from level 0 to level 5. Most of the freight industry still runs at level 0: people emailing spreadsheets. Our goal is level 5 for freight, with Forge as the best agentic platform there is, handling every complexity, every calamity and every odd preference without skipping a beat. Stack: TypeScript, Rust, Next.js, Temporal, Postgres and Snowflake, with models from Anthropic, OpenAI and Google. The role As a Staff Applied AI Engineer on Autonomous Supply Chains, you'll set the direction for the agents that run real logistics work. You'll find the highest-leverage problems in our operations, decide what's worth building, design the solution and ship it to operators moving freight across 135 countries. Nobody hands you a spec, and nobody needs to. What you'll do • Set the technical direction for Forge: how its agents plan, remember, use tools and hand off to people. • Design and ship end-to-end AI agents that handle real logistics work, such as customs compliance, document processing, invoice validation and exception management. • Build the evaluation, guardrails and human-in-the-loop flows that make an agent trustworthy enough to run 24/7. • Stay on top of what's happening in the world of AI, and channel those innovations straight into the product. When Jev came out this fall, we had three use cases live within two weeks. • Work directly with operators, domain experts and leadership to turn ambiguous problems into shipped products, and measure whether they worked. • Cross organizational boundaries to understand problems deeply, align stakeholders and get things done without waiting for permission. • Raise the bar for the team through design reviews, mentoring and the patterns other engineers build on. You should have • 10+ years of software engineering experience, and you've built seriously with LLMs, whether in production, in side projects or just because you couldn't stop yourself. • LLM fluency: agent patterns, tool use, RAG, prompt design and evaluation. You know the difference between what works in production and what looks good in a demo. • Full-stack capability in TypeScript and Next.js. You can own a feature end to end. • Product instinct: you can tell what's worth building, not just how to build it. • A track record of leading ambiguous, cross-team technical work from idea to production. • Clear written and spoken communication in English, including design docs that people actually read. Nice to have • Experience with workflow orchestration, such as Temporal. • Experience building internal tools or operator-facing applications. How we work • We value builders. People who think end to end, do their own discovery and ship independently. Nobody hands you a spec. • Your users sit next to you. Operators, customs experts and account teams work in the same office. Watch them use your tool, and fix it before dessert. • Any model, any harness. Use any frontier model from Anthropic, OpenAI or Google, in all the popular coding harnesses. Our engineers manage swarms of coding agents from their first week. • We ship dozens of times a day, with continuous deployment and a platform team obsessed with making it safe and fast. • Hybrid, in English. We're together in our office on Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, a few minutes from Dam Square, three days a week*. The other days are flexible. English is our working language, and we work daily with colleagues in the US and China. • No logistics background needed. Almost nobody joins knowing what an HTS code or a bill of lading is. The experts sit a few desks away. • Agile, but not dogmatic. Teams decide how they work best. Why this role is special • Your work is visible: a small, senior team that reports to the VP of Engineering. What you build gets noticed, and your ideas set the direction. • Real stakes: your agents act on real shipments for 13,000+ brands in 135 countries, so the impact is immediate and measurable. • You're early: the playbook for applied AI in logistics hasn't been written yet. You'll help write it. What's in it for you • Equity for everyone: every team member becomes a shareholder in a pre-IPO company in a multi-trillion dollar industry. • 25 vacation days, based on full-time employment, plus Dutch public holidays. • Health insurance, fully paid: a collective plan with basic and additional packages. Flexport pays the monthly premium. • Pension: a defined contribution scheme. • Breakfast and lunch: daily catered lunch with vegetarian options, breakfast, snacks and drinks in the office. • Commute covered: Flexport covers home-to-office commuting costs if you live outside Amsterdam. • Parental leave: time off for both parents to bond with a new child. • Wellbeing support: an Employee Assistance Program through Aetna for you and your household, at no cost. • Visa sponsorship: we sponsor visas for the right candidates and help you move to Amsterdam. Eligible international hires may also benefit from the Dutch expat tax ruling. Our hiring process • Application review: our team reviews your application. • Recruiter screen: talk about your experience, the role and your questions about Flexport. • Hiring manager screen: an initial conversation with the hiring manager. • Remote live coding: a live coding interview over video. • Onsite coding and system design: coding and system design interviews in our office. • Project deep dive: discuss a project from your experience with the hiring manager. • Team debrief: the interview team reviews feedback together. You don't attend this step. • Offer: if there's a match, your recruiter walks you through the offer. Your recruiter will confirm the plan before interviews begin. We only contact candidates from @flexport.com addresses, and we will never ask you for money or banking details. Commitment to equal opportunity At Flexport, our ability to fulfill our mission of making global commerce easy and accessible relies on having a diverse, dedicated and engaged workforce. 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. Global data privacy notice for job candidates and applicants Depending on your location, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) may regulate the way we manage the data of job applicants. By submitting your application, you are agreeing to our use and processing of your data as required. Please see our Privacy Notice at www.flexport.com/privacy for more information. * Three days a week is what we expect from the Amsterdam tech team in normal circumstances. Events, performance issues or a change in team policy can mean more time in the office. Commitment to Equal Opportunity At Flexport, our ability to fulfill our mission of making global commerce easy and accessible relies on having a diverse, dedicated and engaged workforce. 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. Global Data Privacy Notice for Job Candidates and Applicants Depending on your location, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) may regulate the way we manage the data of job applicants. By submitting your application, you are agreeing to our use and processing of your data as required. Please see our Privacy Notice available at www.flexport.com/privacy for additional information.