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Zencargo is seeking a Forward-Deployed Engineer to solve real operational and customer problems at the intersection of engineering, product, and operations. You will embed with operations teams to understand complex freight and supply-chain workflows, translate loosely defined business problems into clear technical solutions, and build working solutions that deliver measurable outcomes.
In this hands-on role, you will work directly with users and senior stakeholders to identify where software and AI can remove manual work. You'll help uncover real problems, shape solutions, build them, ship them, and learn from performance. Your work spans the full lifecycle: from discovery through independent building, deployment, and running solutions in production. You will often find yourself turning manual workflows and spreadsheet-based processes into automated, AI-driven systems.
Key responsibilities include:
- Embedding with operations teams and internal stakeholders (typically for a few months at a time) to understand complex workflows
- Translating business problems into technical solutions, deciding when to extend existing functionality versus building new
- Converting manual, spreadsheet, and inbox-based decisions into platform logic that can be automated and increasingly handled by AI
- Building and deploying prototypes, automations, and production-ready features, integrating with Zencargo services, carrier platforms, and third-party APIs
- Using AI and modern development tools both to accelerate delivery and as a core part of solutions
- Working with structured and unstructured data (emails, documents, purchase orders, shipment data, operational events)
- Testing and measuring solutions against real workflows and user feedback
- Identifying patterns across problems and converting them into reusable platform functionality
- Collaborating closely with Product, Design, Engineering, Data, and Infrastructure teams while retaining ownership of delivery
- Communicating technical decisions, limitations, and trade-offs clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders, including executives
- Maintaining standards for security, reliability, data protection, and maintainability
Success is measured by reduced manual effort in operational workflows, faster movement from problem identification to production solutions, adoption and effective use of delivered solutions, reliability and maintainability of deployed systems, and the number of repeated problems converted into reusable platform capabilities.
REQUIREMENTS:
- Strong professional software engineering experience across the full lifecycle, comfortable taking a problem from discovery through to independently building, deploying, and running it in production
- Strong skills in at least one modern programming language (TypeScript, JavaScript, Python, Java, Kotlin, or C#); familiarity with Kotlin or Python is valued but not essential
- Experience building and consuming APIs, webhooks, and system integrations
- Experience working with databases, data models, and event-driven workflows
- Fluent use of AI-assisted development tools as a core part of how you build (essential to the role)
- Strong product judgment: understands unfamiliar business processes quickly, embeds with teams to distill what matters, separates immediate user requests from underlying problems
- Comfortable working with ambiguity and making sensible decisions without perfect requirements; bias toward action, experimentation, and iterative delivery
- Confidence working directly with operational users and senior stakeholders, collaborating across functions, and explaining technical concepts in clear, practical language
- Strong ownership, including responsibility for whether solutions achieve intended outcomes, not just code delivery
- Good understanding of software quality, observability, testing, security, and maintainable architecture
DESIRABLE EXPERIENCE:
- Experience in freight, logistics, supply chain, or B2B SaaS/operational technology environments
- Experience building workflow automation or orchestration (e.g., n8n)
- Experience with large language model applications and unstructured-data problems (document extraction, email classification)
- Experience integrating with ERP, transport-management, warehouse-management, or operational systems
- Experience in solutions engineering, implementation, internal-tools, or forward-deployed roles
- Familiarity with cloud infrastructure, Terraform, CI/CD, and production support in early-stage or high-growth environments
