Flexport appoints James Chen as chief technology officer

July 25, 2019: Flexport has appointed James Chen as chief technology officer (CTO), as the company continues to grow and expand its suite of products to make global trade easier.

"At Flexport, we pride ourselves on bringing in world-class talent that's passionate about the work they do. In James' case, he was a coder since high school," said Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen. 

At Flexport, Chen will be responsible for driving product vision and technology strategy. He's looking forward to helping Flexport scale sustainably and intelligently. As Flexport itself has grown rapidly, its technology has evolved through quick and consistent iterations and incremental pushes. Chen's experience will be instrumental in setting an overarching technology vision that will serve as a blueprint for future innovation. 

Prior to this, Chen was working with Jenzabar (CampusCraze) and Rakuten (Freecause) as CTO and most recently director of technology at Amazon. Chen brings deep expertise in setting ambitious goals and leading large technical teams to achieve them. 

 At Flexport, those who are responsible for creating product and technology are known as 'Makers.' It's a term that's cropped up in the past five-plus years to describe those who take a thoughtful and deliberate approach to create and innovate.  

The Maker organisation at Flexport holistically designs for global trade. With Makers teams in San Francisco, Chicago and now China, technologists sit close to the key functions they serve across trucking, air, and warehousing. Rather than design technology for the logistics industry in a vacuum, the group insists on incorporating members from operations who regularly interact with target users, to make sure it serves as a function. 

In the course of Flexport's development as a company, the Makers Team has built out tools and technology that serve more than 10,000 customers and partners worldwide. Its efforts are the lynchpin for Flexport's mission to make global trade easy for everyone.