Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen says the conflict is stranding cargo and threatening inflation. After years of chaos in the global supply chain, Ryan Petersen, CEO of the logistics company Flexport, felt 2026 might offer some modicum of order. The pandemic was firmly in the rearview mirror. Red Sea shipping channels--which had been closed due to the Gaza crisis--were finally opening. The Supreme Court struck down many of Donald Trump's tariffs, and some Flexport customers were hoping for refunds.

Flexport is looking for a creative, technically minded Senior Analytics Engineer to solve some of the most challenging data problems in global trade. Data is the heart of our business. You will be part of a team responsible for providing the most up to date information and insights about global supply chains, transportation, and logistics. The abstractions created by this team represent the digital state of the world and will be used to understand the business, operational workflows, and feed predictive machine learning models. As a Senior Analytics Engineer, you will work in complex data ecosystems.

Flexport is looking for a creative, technically-minded Applied Data Scientist who is motivated to solve some of the world's most challenging problems. Data is at the heart of our business and as an Applied Data Scientist, you will work to evaluate and provide insights into both our physical and digital products & features. In collaboration with multidisciplinary product and engineering teams, you will apply advanced methods, robust code, and transparent scientific rigor to creatively develop optimization products that will be embedded in software systems that deliver data-driven insights and automated decision making to end users where they need it, and when they need it. You will help to develop high performing individuals and serve as a technical leader and mentor to others. Our product and engineering teams collaborate very closely with our Applied Data Scientists to share domain knowledge, test hypotheses at scale and develop promising solutions that can be quickly and widely deployed.

Leo Polovets of Susa Ventures recently sat down with Machine Learnings for a chat about machine learning, data moats, and artificial intelligence ethics. Sam: Leo! It's great to meet you. Can you introduce yourself and context for the work you've done that our audience may be unaware of? Leo: It's nice to meet you too, Sam. I'm 1 of 3 partners at a $50 million seed fund called Susa Ventures. I've invested in companies like Flexport, Robinhood, and LendUp to name a few.