Ocean Planning Associate

The opportunity:

Our Ocean Planning Team is essential to winning new business, supporting all current business, and building out the future of Flexport’s ocean services.  As a Planning Associate, you’ll be an integral part of helping achieve Flexport’s growth goals.

We’re looking for multiple team members, responsible for different trades that we are focusing on. Candidates will need to have a passion for ocean freight and ability to work with parties across different parts of the organization.

What you’ll do:

• Execute end-to-end planning and booking of ocean freight shipments within a regional network (exports), including origin intermodal movements
• Act as the first point of escalation for issue resolution and process improvement, both internally and externally, for specific trade lanes or carriers
• Coordinate day-to-day operations with Account Management, Ocean Execution, Allocation and Procurement, ROM, and Ocean Carriers
• Maintain FMT data including allocation, sailing schedules, cut-off dates, etc
• Execute pre-bookings, support/hypercare trial shipment and submit rollover list if necessary
• Create best practices, work on function enhancements, do automation study and provide feedback to tech/engineering teams
• Conduct data analysis on utilization and forecasts vs allocation
• Manage and resolve exceptions and escalations through the operations process in a timely manner based on agreed SLA’s
• Build and develop local carrier relationships including coverage of carrier meetings, performance metrics, market intelligence collection (extraloader plans, omissions and blank sailings)
• Work with the Ocean Procurement and Allocation & Yield on allocation planning and escalation handling. Manage hard allocation and give feedback to Allocation & Yield on requirements. 
• Prepare forecasts and request soft allocation to match surplus demand in order to secure space for our clients
• Optimize through net revenue steering and deadfreight performance management
• Monitor performance on OTE and other relevant metrics
• Work on continuous process improvements
• Additional projects and duties as assigned

What you’ll need:

• Bachelor’s degree in logistics, supply chain, business, or related fields.
• Minimum 5 years of experience in ocean operation or related roles in freight forwarding/logistics.
• Good communication of written and spoken English.Chinese is a plus
• Detail-oriented, structured, and eager to learn global supply chain operations.
• Customer-focused mindset: respond promptly and professionally to customer needs, answering calls and dealing with customer queries, providing first-class customer service at all times.