Software Engineer II

Why Customs Matters More Than Ever

International trade is under more pressure than ever before. With tariffs, shifting regulations, and geopolitical uncertainty, customs has gone from a back-office function to a boardroom priority. The recent trade crisis—sparked by Trump-era tariffs—has made customs the single most complex challenge for global businesses. For many, it’s the difference between keeping supply chains moving or grinding them to a halt.

That’s where we come in. The Customs Technology team at Flexport is leading the charge. We are building the systems that help entrepreneurs and global brands navigate complexity, stay compliant, and keep the world’s goods flowing.

The opportunity: 

Customs brokerage is one of the largest, most under-innovated opportunities in logistics. Legacy customs brokers are stuck with outdated systems and manual processes—they simply can’t adapt fast enough.

Flexport is growing fast because we’re different. We are the only big tech company in the space, and the only freight forwarder that got founded after the launch of Netscape. Being a tech company, we can move much faster than our competitors, and give our customers the service they expect in this day and age. We can deploy things like LLM agents at scale, in an industry that is ripe to be disrupted by this technology.

Things we ❤️

• Leveraging AI in a safe way to eliminate mundane work for customs brokers and automate customs every step of the way
• Modeling complex and ambiguous domains into fully automated workflows
• Building highly performant and reliable Kotlin services on our cutting-edge infrastructure platform
• Collaborating with end users across the globe to create the best possible product: removing toil and surfacing interesting cases

You will:

• Work closely with business partners and product managers to distill complex business problems into elegant technical solutions.
• Work on systems that represent the real-world intricacies of logistics entities and the process of moving cargo in and out of countries.
• Build and launch products rapidly and incrementally. We ship to production dozens of times per day.
• Geek out about shipping, customs regulations and logistics. (We do this often.)
• Figure out the most efficient way for our customers and partners to participate in the process of moving freight across borders.
• Design and build deep, complex integrations with government agencies and partners.
• Automate archaic customs 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.
• Create beautiful and efficient domain models for the incredibly complex world of freight forwarding.

You should have:

• > 3 years of experience writing software, and a strong engineering background.
• 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, designers and engineers alike.
• A bias for action. When you see a problem, you solve it.
• A desire to develop your tooling repertoire. We are tech-agnostic regarding candidate background, but our platform is built with Ruby.
• Non-optional: an aptitude for learning quickly.

How we work:

• We come to the office at two to three times a week to hang out, have lunch, white board, and collaborate
• We have the latest and greatest hardware and software for you to work with
• We’re agile, but not married to a single doctrine like scrum. The teams decide how they work best.
• Stack: we’re coming from a React/Flow + Ruby on Rails monolith, and moving to React/Typescript, Kotlin Microservices on Kubernetes. We also use and love GraphQL, GRPC, Postgres, Kafka and Snowflake

What's in it for you?

• An opportunity to contribute to one of the fastest-growing companies, where you’ll have the chance to create a global impact while being a part of a  thriving multinational environment 
• Daily catered lunches incl. vegetarian options, breakfast, snacks and soft drinks available in our office on daily basis 
• Commute expenses: Flexport will cover  home-office commuting costs for employees living outside of Amsterdam
• 25 working days as vacation days based on full time employment.
• Health insurance: Flexport offers a collective health insurance plan including a basic package and any available additional packages. Your monthly premium is fully paid by Flexport. 
• A defined pension contribution scheme
• Equity program: every team member becomes a shareholder, aligning our success with yours. As a private company in a multi-trillion dollar industry, you have a direct stake in our collective growth and success.
• Employee Assistance Program through Aetna Resources for Living: Flexport provides an employer-sponsored program at no cost to you and your household members
• Parental leave benefit: Flexport is here to support you and your families in one of the most important times in life – the birth of a child! Our parental leave program allows both mothers and partners to take time off from work for pregnancy, childbirth, and to bond with your new child.