Director, Ocean Gateway (PRS)

Flexport · Shenzhen 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. The Director, 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. Tactical Responsibilities: 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. 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. Be 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. 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. Manage vendor cost and performance (BPO, trucking, terminals and other gateway vendors) against SLAs and cost-per-file targets. 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. Lead adoption of Flexport technology and AI in daily gateway work and set the expectation that your team scopes problems AI-first. 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. 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. Proactively drive operational improvements and quality consistency with assigned partners, leveraging global performance metrics, targets and dashboards. 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: 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. 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. 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. 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. Work closely with global management to design the right metrics that empower your gateway team to deliver great performance. Provide leadership and direction to a high-perf