Director, Ocean Gateway (PRS)

The Head of Ocean Gateway, PRS is a critical part of Flexport's mission to make global trade easy for everyone a reality. Your direct stakeholders are the partners within your region, account management, ocean carriers, terminals and trucking providers. Your work directly supports Flexport's end customers in achieving their logistics goals. Most importantly, you will play a pivotal role in building the future operational model at Flexport, allowing us to scale effectively and achieve our mission of making global trade easier for everyone.

This position owns the performance and profitability of the PRS gateway and strategically leads your team through the complex world of logistics. Flexport's operating model is technology-led and AI-enabled, and you will lead the gateway team in working that way. You will work cross-functionally to navigate ambiguous challenges and build a world-class operating team. At this stage in Flexport's journey, we are looking for best-in-class leadership that can articulate a clear vision and excite teams to execute it day in and day out.

Tactical Responsibilities:

As Head of Ocean Gateway, PRS, you are an expert in executing the end-to-end movement of shipments within a regional network, including Ocean FCL and LCL for exports and imports.

• You will own the gateway's P&L mindset: manage customer profitability and cost to serve, and manage AR/AP together with Finance and account management to keep cash flow healthy.
• You will build the operational performance framework, process and tools to manage our vendor’s performance in the PRS market according to our company's business needs.
• You are the primary relationship manager for internal and external stakeholders in your gateway, including partners, ocean carriers, trucking providers, account management, Ocean Procurement / Allocation & Yield and Regional Ocean Management.
• You will negotiate with carriers locally — local deals and space release — within your delegated authority, and drive carrier performance (on-time execution, rolling, space) through scorecards and volume allocation.
• You will manage vendor cost and performance (BPO, trucking, terminals and other gateway vendors) against SLAs and cost-per-file targets.
• You will hire, coach and develop a team of (senior) associates and managers responsible for the end-to-end movement of Ocean FCL and LCL shipments within the gateway, and build succession for key roles.
• You will lead adoption of Flexport technology and AI in daily gateway work and set the expectation that your team scopes problems AI-first.
• You will design operational processes and infrastructure to ensure Flexport executes quality service delivery on time, efficiently, cost-effectively and, most importantly, creates a world-class customer experience.
• You will bring ocean commercial sense to the business: recommend supply chain solutions for new clients and opportunities to the account management and demand teams, support RFQs and tenders with feasible, profitable lane offers, and prepare enablement resources for internal teams to sell our ocean product.
• You will proactively drive operational improvements and quality consistency with assigned partners, leveraging global performance metrics, targets and dashboards.
• You will guard the "front line" in ensuring the highest standard of Flexport quality: designing the right processes and metrics for shipments to move on time and exceptions to be resolved quickly and appropriately. You will be accountable for meeting internal KPIs and SLAs that demonstrate quality delivery.

Adaptive Responsibilities:

• You will allow Flexport to decouple scale and headcount: raise SPO and lower cost to serve through process improvement, automation and AI-enabled workflows, working with global management, Product and Ops Tech.
• You will work with Product and Ops Tech to define requirements, pilot new features and digital agents in your gateway, and feed frontline learnings back into the technology roadmap.
• You will drive AI culture in your team as a behavior change, not a tooling rollout: set adoption targets, track weekly-active usage and the effect on productivity, and coach managers to redesign workflows around automation.
• You will use data and dashboards to make decisions — SPO, cost per file, OTE, exception and margin data — and evolve the front line from problem solver to file owner.
• You will work closely with global management to design the right metrics that empower your gateway team to deliver great performance.
• You will provide leadership and direction to a high-performance team, including hiring, training and career development.
• You will empower your team to prioritize and align on key initiatives, experiment with the best ways to drive performance, and maintain high on-the-job motivation.
• You will work with Account Management to design and iterate on effective feedback loops to ensure client needs are met.
• You will act as a strategic consultant to your regional and global counterparts on ocean supply chain operations and your gateway strategy.

What you will need:

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience, and a minimum of 10–15 years of experience in logistics, freight forwarding, supply chain and ocean carrier operations
• MA/MS degree in a business or logistics-oriented field is a plus
• Language requirements: native Mandarin; professional working English
• P&L mindset: sense of managing customer profitability, with the discipline to manage AR/AP and keep cash flow healthy
• Ocean commercial sense: able to support the demand team in selling the ocean freight product
• Ocean procurement sense: able to negotiate with carriers locally for local deals as well as space release
• Able to manage vendor cost and performance
• Proven ability to develop others and build a high-performance team
• Tech and AI mindset: comfortable running a technology-enabled operating model, with a record of adopting automation or AI tools and changing team behavior around them
• Data-driven: strong Excel/data analysis; uses dashboards and metrics (SPO, cost per file, OTE) to run the gateway
• Capability to lead a team in day-to-day execution and process improvement
• Experience managing the end-to-end shipment lifecycle and working with Account Management teams to understand and cater to the client experience
• Demonstrated ability building and implementing cross-functional, complex processes
• Strategic vision and ground-floor execution
• Ability to identify win-win commercial and operational opportunities
• Excitement to manage relationships and create a best-in-class operational structure
• Hands-on, process-oriented, structured thinker with strong problem-solving skills
• Client experience mindset — obsessed with client and squad happiness
• Excellent communication, interpersonal and organizational skills
• Courage to challenge the status quo when logic and reason require it. See something broken? Fix it!
• The desire to lead, train and develop up-and-coming industry talent