Software Engineer I

Chicago, USA

Flexport helps more than 10,000 clients and suppliers lead all aspects of their supply chain operations. Started in 2013, we've raised over $1.3B from investors that include the Founders Fund, Google Ventures, First Round Capital, Bloomberg Beta, Y Combinator, Wells Fargo, & Softbank. 

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 a new operating system for global trade.

The procurement team builds products to connect suppliers and partners to Flexport’s Marketplace platform for global trade. By empowering our trade lane management teams to source and maintain an expansive supply network, we can provide our clients with competitive pricing and unique service offerings. Key to this is our team’s ability to deliver structured inventory and cost agreements. We do this by integrating with 3rd party data sources, automating operational workflows, and building highly available systems to enable end-to-end quoting. Our team’s data is also used across all transit modes to optimize inventory utilization and provide cost visibility to our clients and business partners.

What Makes the Team Unique

• We work across all transit modes (Ocean, Air, and Trucking) and have many stakeholders with diverse needs (procurement, pricing, finance, planning). As such, we are constantly finding opportunities to improve our agility by streamlining our work across the domain.
• We have Friday team happy hours where we chat about our latest DIY projects, hone our Draw Battle skills, and are humbled by our collective lack of geography trivia knowledge.

• Model complex global freight domain specifically in the context of costs and space 
• Design our core APIs (public, internal, rpc, admin, webhooks) to define interactions and enable those interactions. The reliability and scalability of systems are really important.
• Define how the team handles visibility and observability and enhance the current observability of the system.
• Define and implement streaming and batch patterns for data consumption and for enablement of various product needs. 
• Work closely with business partners and product managers to distill complex business problems into elegant technical solutions.
• Architect and drive major projects while coordinating with multiple stakeholders. We often work on multi-month projects that require phased iterative rollouts and collaboration with cross-functional team members.
• Design systems that represent the real-world intricacies of logistics entities, such as services, rates, charges, quotes, invoices, and pricing.
• Ensure our products maintain a high-quality bar. We believe in anticipating issues by obsessing over metrics and applying key learnings from post-mortems to all our services.
• Tackle difficult and subtle system-level issues, emphasizing simplicity and long-lasting designs. As we extract services out of the monolith, we take pride in untangling legacy code and re-building with composability in mind.
• Geek out about marketplaces, prices, quotes, and logistics. (We do this often)

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science or related technical field, or equivalent technical experience.
• 1+ years of experience writing software, and strong engineering background.
• The ability to convey technical ideas in common terms to business partners, product managers, designers, and engineers alike.
• We are tech-agnostic regarding candidate’s background, but our platform is built with React, Ruby, Java and we are actively transitioning to a JVM-based stack.
• Preferred experience if any: Java/Kotlin/Scala, React
• A bias for action. When you see a problem, you solve it.
• Non-optional: An aptitude for learning quickly.

Our continuous releases are integrated with Buildkite and Github. On the front end, 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 we have introduced microservices built using Java, Kotlin/Scala, and Clojure. Our data is persisted mostly in Postgres, MongoDB, and Redis. Our stack is hosted on AWS. We use docker and kubernetes clusters.

Check out our Key Values profile.

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. 

Do I need to have any freight forwarding experience?
No. 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.