Senior Software Engineer, Autonomous Freight Systems
Flexport is hiring a Senior Software Engineer, Autonomous Freight Systems in San Francisco, United States. It pays $206k-$252k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Flexport.
Level's read on this job
- Works on AI ●●●○ is how Level rates this software engineer role: the daily work is on AI products, without building the model.
- The listed pay starts 23% above the typical software engineer posting on Level.
- Tools and skills the posting cites include React, LLMs and RAG.
- Level classifies it as a senior role.
- Level lists 191 other open roles at Flexport.
AI in this role
Build AI-powered pricing intelligence and agent-driven freight booking systems for Flexport's autonomous freight team.
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.
The Opportunity
The Autonomous Freight Systems team is a brand new, AI-first engineering team in San Francisco, building Flexport's client-facing rates platform and self-serve freight booking experience from the ground up. We own two of the highest-leverage surfaces in the Client App: how clients see pricing and how they book freight without manual intervention.
As a Senior Engineer, you will own significant technical domains end-to-end, not just features, but whole problem spaces. You will drive the engineering of systems that power rate visibility, pricing intelligence, and AI-assisted booking across ocean, air, and trucking. You don't wait to be told what to build next; you identify the highest-leverage problems, propose solutions, and see them through to production. You will be a technical force multiplier on the team: raising the bar on code quality, helping junior engineers grow, and shipping with a velocity and confidence that comes from deep ownership.
This is a ground-floor opportunity to build the platform that moves Flexport from an assisted-sales model to a tech-run one for the long tail of our client base—turning the complexity of global trade into a seamless digital experience for thousands of shippers.
You Will
- Take end-to-end technical ownership of core systems: from schema design and backend APIs to the React surfaces our customers use and drive them to production without needing oversight.
- Proactively identify gaps, inefficiencies, and engineering problems within your domain and lead the effort to resolve them.
- Design and build AI-powered features and integrations, moving beyond "AI familiarity" to hands-on implementation of agent workflows and LLM-backed automation in production.
- Drive technical design for significant features, producing well-reasoned proposals and aligning teammates before writing the first line of code.
- Mentor and support P2 engineers through code review, pairing, and design feedback, raising the quality of the team's output.
- Collaborate closely with product, design, pricing, and operations to translate complex domain problems into elegant, production-ready solutions.
- Build and ship incrementally: this team deploys to production dozens of times per day, and you are comfortable with that pace.
- Ensure reliability and quality by building in metrics, monitoring, and applying learnings from incidents to all systems you own.
You Should Have
- 5+ years of professional software engineering experience with a proven track record of shipping production-grade systems with increasing levels of independence.
- Deep Ownership Instinct: You hold yourself accountable for outcomes, not just outputs. When something breaks, you fix it—and you make sure it doesn't break again.
- Full-Stack Fluency: You can own a feature from the database to the browser. You are opinionated about schema design, API contracts, and frontend architecture, not just one layer.
- AI/LLM Hands-On Experience: You have built software that integrates LLMs into real user workflows—not just proof-of-concepts, but production systems. You understand the practical challenges: latency, reliability, prompt fragility, and cost.
- Agency and Drive: You identify the next most important problem without being asked. You default to action, propose solutions, and bring others along.
- Technical Rigor: A genuine passion for simple, well-tested, well-structured code. You push back on complexity and leave systems better than you found them.
- Communication: You can explain a technical tradeoff clearly to a product manager and to a staff engineer. Your design docs and code reviews are worth reading.
- Proficiency with deploying, monitoring, and maintaining production services on cloud infrastructure (AWS).
It's a Plus If You Have
- Experience with elements of our tech stack: Java, Spring Boot, Ruby on Rails, React, AWS.
- Familiarity with agentic patterns, RAG, or workflow orchestration (e.g., Temporal).
- Experience in logistics, supply chain, freight technology, or pricing systems.
- A bias for action: when you see a problem, you own the fix.
#LI-onsite
#LI-VA1
The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire base salary for the position in the posting's respective region. Our salary ranges are determined by role, level, and location. Within the range displayed, individual pay is determined by work location and additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education and / or training. Base salary is just one part of our total rewards package at Flexport, which also includes bonus, equity, and comprehensive benefit offerings such as medical, dental, and flexible time off. The US base salary range for this position (this does not include bonus, equity and benefits):$206,181—$252,000 USDCommitment 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.
How we rate this
Senior Software Engineer, Autonomous Freight Systems at Flexport rates 75 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Works on AI (AI Level 3 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Works on AI. The daily work is on AI products, without building the model.
- ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
- ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
- ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
- ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39
Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.
Prepare for this job
Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Also common in software engineer jobs at this level
Pay
- This job starts at
- $206k
- Typical software engineer job
- $167k
This posting starts 23% above the typical software engineer job. See software engineer jobs
Questions you could be asked
- How would you design a retrieval step so the model answers from real data instead of guessing?
- Tell me about a project where software engineering was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where backend apis was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where schema design was part of your work. What did you do?
- How do you decide when an AI agent can act on its own versus asking for approval first?
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: RAG, Software Engineering, Backend APIs, Schema Design, and AI agents. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
- Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
- Show where AI is part of your daily process, not a one-off project. This role expects it to be a running habit.
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