Ai Engineer

About Freight Hero:
The freight brokerage industry has exploded in recent years, growing from a mere 6% to over 20% of US truck freight in just a decade, now valued at $21 billion. Freight brokers typically allocate up to 90% of their time to operational back-office tasks, leaving only 10% for revenue-generating activities (depending on the business model). By combining AI with human oversight, we can streamline these back-office processes, driving significant operational efficiencies. The industry's profit margins have recently contracted from 20% to 5%, underscoring the critical need for cost reduction. We believe that the perfect storm of industry challenges and AI maturity presents a venture scale opportunity to revolutionize the freight brokerage sector and the broader freight/supply chain industry.
Freight Hero is funded and supported by AI Fund based in Palo Alto, California. AI Fund is a team of diligent innovators who build great companies that move humanity forward by accelerating the adoption of AI. Founded by Dr. Andrew Ng, AI Fund is a startup studio focused on resolving problems to move the world forward. We build new AI companies to bridge AI technology and critical applications. Just as electricity transformed numerous industries, AI and AI Fund are poised to do the same.
What We Seek:
We are looking for an AI Engineer to the development and evolution of Freight Hero's core AI capabilities. You will work directly with the CEO to design a strategic roadmap for integrating AI into our platform—empowering human agents, automating complex workflows, and enhancing operational efficiency across the freight brokerage lifecycle. As the owner of our AI stack, you will make critical architectural decisions, experiment with cutting-edge tools, and iteratively improve our systems for real-world logistics execution.
Tech Stack:
At Freight Hero, we work with a pragmatic mix of open-source frameworks and cloud-native services. You don't need experience with every tool, but familiarity with several of the following is a plus:
- Languages & Frameworks:
Python, VSCode/Cursor
- Cloud Infrastructure:
AWS, GCP, Terraform for IaC
- API stack:
Pydantic, FastAPI, Uvicorn/Gunicorn
- Datastores:
PostgreSQL/Aurora, DynamoDB, S3, AWS OpenSearch
- Serverless & Events:
AWS Lambda, EventBridge, SQS
- Testing & Quality:
Pytest, Scenarios
- Observability:
OpenTelemetry, CloudWatch, Celery Flower.
- Containers & Deploy:
ECS, ECR, Docker Compose
- LLM Dev Tooling:
LangChain, LangGraph, LangSmith, LangWatch
- CI/CD:
GitHub Actions
What You Will Be Doing:
Own the AI Stack
– Lead the architecture, development, and continual refinement of Freight Hero's AI capabilities, including data pipelines, model training, and real-time inference systems.
Define the Strategic Vision
– Establish the long-term roadmap for how AI can augment or automate broker workflows, from task automation to predictive analytics and agentic systems.
Build and deploy AI-powered systems and tools
—from internal operator assistants (e.g. summarization, internal copilots) to task-oriented agents (e.g. workflow routing, escalation flows) and real-time voice interfaces for interacting with external stakeholders. Leverage foundational models, fine-tuned LLMs, and open-source frameworks to support high-volume, high-reliability logistics use cases.
Prototype, Validate, and Iterate
– Rapidly develop MVPs, conduct real-world pilots, gather feedback, and fine-tune models and flows for reliability, and compliance with industry norms.
Optimize for Human-in-the-Loop Performance
– Design workflows that integrate seamlessly with Freight Hero's augmented operations team, empowering human agents while offloading repetitive tasks.
Integrate with the Freight Ecosystem
– Ensure your AI systems communicate effectively with TMS platforms, VOIP systems, CRMs, and broker operations tools, creating a seamless data and workflow layer.
Build for Scale and Resilience
– Architect scalable, cloud-native infrastructure that can handle concurrent sessions and asynchronous callbacks in real time.
Collaborate Cross-Functionally
– Work alongside operations, product, and engineering to align AI capabilities with business goals, SLA requirements, and user experience priorities.
Stay Ahead of the Curve
– Constantly evaluate advancements in AI, machine learning tooling, and infrastructure to keep Freight Hero on the cutting edge.
What You Must Bring:
English Proficiency
– Strong written and verbal English communication skills required.
LLM & Agentic Workflow Experience
– Deep understanding of agentic workflow orchestration, prompt engineering, memory handling, and multi-turn conversation design using open-source or commercial stacks.
Experience building AI-powered productivity tools
—such as internal copilots, summarization services, or operator-facing assistants that integrate into daily workflows.
Product Ownership Mindset
– Ability to define what to build and why, balancing technical feasibility with operational impact and end-user delight.
Startup Grit
– Experience building from scratch in early-stage or high-velocity environments; you're comfortable wearing multiple hats and moving fast.
System Design & Infrastructure
– Proficient in designing scalable systems that integrate securely with cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, GCP, Azure) and internal operations tools.
Human-Centric Automation
– Passion for blending AI with human judgment—designing systems that enhance rather than replace frontline workers.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
– Strong communication skills and a bias toward action when aligning with business stakeholders and operations teams.
Nice To Haves Include:
Machine Learning Expertise
– Hands-on experience with a variety of machine learning domains (e.g., natural language processing, predictive modeling, or computer vision).
MLOps Experience
– Prior experience with MLOps frameworks or building production-grade machine learning pipelines.
Freight/Logistics Domain Familiarity
– Prior experience or demonstrated interest in freight, logistics, or back-office automation.
Characteristics We Value:
Accountability:
an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one's actions while doing so with the highest regard for integrity.
Leadership:
able to influence others to follow you and lead the team to a brighter future.
Grit:
able to stick with projects and work hard through good and bad times. High pain tolerance and can perform well under stress or pressure.
Scrappy:
Takes initiative and proactively gets things done with low resources, but doing creative things, begging, borrowing, and whatever is needed in an ambiguous environment or situation.
Ownership Orientation:
Demonstrated orientation of extreme ownership over all aspects of the company and extremely results-driven in nature.
We are committed to providing an environment of mutual respect where equal employment opportunities are available to all applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy (including childbirth, lactation and related medical conditions), national origin, age, physical and mental disability, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, genetic information (including characteristics and testing), military and veteran status, and any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We believes that diversity and inclusion among our employees is critical to our success as a company, and we seek to recruit, develop and retain the most talented people from a diverse candidate pool. Selection for employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, merit, and business need.