Flexport's vice president of engineering, Alex Nederlof.
Flexport
- Flexport trains its staff to use AI so they can customize automated workflows.
- The VP of engineering at the freight-forwarding company shared how the upskilling course works.
- AI upskilling in logistics can boost efficiency and help staff adapt to job-market changes.
AI is modernizing supply chains by suggesting more efficient delivery routes, tracking energy use, and increasing access to quality products. Still, the broader logistics industry is in the early stages of AI implementation.
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"Tools have developed faster than what the internal capability has," said Anastasia Kouvela, a managing director and partner at Boston Consulting Group. She said there is a skills gap in the logistics-data discipline, a lack of trust in advanced algorithms, and a shortage of soft skills needed to explain AI decisions to customers, all of which hinder logistics companies' abilities to implement AI.
To get ahead of these challenges, the San Francisco-based freight forwarding company Flexport has made AI upskilling a key focus. The company sells software that gives global logistics companies greater visibility, organization, and control over the movement of their goods.
Since the start of 2025, the company's vice president of engineering, Alex Nederlof, has offered an in-house 90-day training program for employees across departments like human resources, legal, and operations, so they can learn to use AI to build tools that make their work more efficient.
Teaching employees to think like software engineers
Nederlof, who also heads Flexport's AI platform team, launched the upskilling program in January 2025 to automate repetitive tasks like sending emails, extracting information from PDFs, and filling out forms.
Staffers who participate in Flexport's upskilling course must commit to automating a specific part of their workflow, said Nederlof. They learn to use LLMs, such as OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude, and AI agents to build and run automated tools. They don't need to code themselves; instead, they vibe code by prompting an AI system to build what they need.
"I went from zero coding experience to building automations that are shaping companywide initiatives — in a matter of months," said Jenna Ward, a senior program manager in operations at Flexport.
Nederlof said he aims to teach non‑engineers to behave like product engineers. They need to think about security and how to be good software engineers, including how to properly test products and design them so that human input and monitoring are always part of the process, he said. It's up to employees if they want to participate, Nederlof said, but they need to apply and get their manager's sign-off.
Recent projects have included a vibe-coded app that automatically checks customs forms, a process that traditionally requires employees to check individual forms for each customs entry, and a Q&A chatbot for frequently asked employee questions that HR staffers built, Nederlof said. These tools replace external software, which reduces Flexport's bill for software-as-a-service products, he added.
Continuous learning in the age of AI
AI's capabilities have advanced dramatically over the past few months. For example, Flexport's engineering team initially thought it would take six months to fully automate emails, but one engineer needed only three days due to the rise in vibe coding.
As such, Nederlof decided to reshape the upskilling course. In January 2026, he updated the program to have two levels for all departments, including legal and HR. He said it is now constantly evolving as new AI techniques and tools are released, such as popular chatbots and software automation tools like n8n and GitHub. At each level of the training course, participants face fewer restrictions on what they can build and which tasks they can build for, he said.
Since debuting his course, Nederlof said he has had other companies reach out to learn how to implement something similar. His advice, he said, is to identify people with an aptitude for building automation quickly, ensure they have access to good technology, and put guardrails in place so they can build without making silly mistakes.
"These people live in every part of your organization. Drop your preconceived notion of who might be eligible. From ops to recruitment to finance, I've seen success stories everywhere," Nederlof told Business Insider.
Addressing the broader concern that AI will make much of the workforce redundant, as companies need fewer people to do the same amount of work, Nederlof said that Flexport's upskilling program will help departing staffers get their next job.
He said that he tells his workers that if they switch careers, they can tell their new employers, "I carry the same value as four other operators. I am a four‑person team, because of the tools that I have," because of what they are able to build with AI and the product-engineering mindset they learned at Flexport.
The company offers upskilling to all staffers — those who do and don't take part in the AI-specific course — through a content library for self-guided learning on topics like AI, logistics, and management. Flexport also encourages employees to share videos, tutorials, and workflows in a dedicated Slack channel, said a spokesperson for the company. The AI upskilling program, on the other hand, requires dedicated time and has a formalized curriculum.
This kind of fluency in technology and AI is increasingly a prerequisite for supply-chain job postings, said Kouvela, adding that it can be a competitive edge — for workers, and for the businesses that hire them.
Companies that invest early in their people will be the ones able to squeeze out inefficiencies, respond to crises faster, and ultimately deliver better service to their customers, Kouvela said.
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