Principal Engineer, Customer Engineering

About FourKites

FourKites is the leading supply chain visibility platform, helping companies transform their logistics operations through real-time tracking, predictive intelligence, and AI-powered automation. As we expand our portfolio with agentic AI capabilities that autonomously optimize supply chain decisions, we're transforming from a visibility platform into an intelligent orchestration system that drives measurable business outcomes for the world's most recognized brands.

Whether it's medical supplies from Cardinal Health or groceries for Walmart, the FourKites platform helps customers operate global supply chains that are efficient, agile and sustainable.

About the Role

We're seeking a Principal Engineer to serve as the senior technical authority across our Fortune 500 customer base, operating at the intersection of hands-on engineering, solution architecture, and strategic customer partnership. You'll own the most complex integration designs and AI-powered workflow implementations end-to-end: decomposing enterprise supply chain problems into architecture, building the solution, and ensuring it scales.

This is not a coordination role. You will write code, build data pipelines, design microservices architectures, and ship production integrations alongside the team. When a customer needs a real-time event-driven integration with their SAP landscape, or an agentic workflow that autonomously resolves shipment exceptions, you're the person who designs it, proves it out, and ensures it delivers business value. You'll carry strategic customer relationships across the full account lifecycle (pre-sales through production), feed field intelligence back into Product and R&D, and build external thought leadership that establishes FourKites as the technical standard in supply chain AI.

Reporting to the Director of Engineering, this is a senior individual contributor role. You'll lead without direct reports, operating through technical excellence, mentorship, and cross-functional influence across Customer Engineering, Professional Services, Product, and R&D Engineering.

What you'll be doing

Solution Architecture & Hands-On Engineering

Architect end-to-end integration solutions for complex enterprise environments spanning ERP (SAP, Oracle, Blue Yonder, Manhattan), OMS, WMS, TMS, and YMS platforms, working directly with customer technical teams to translate business problems into implementable designs

Design and build data pipelines (batch and streaming) using messaging infrastructure and event-driven architectures that enable real-time supply chain data flow at enterprise scale

Build, extend, and optimize agentic AI workflows using LangGraph, LangChain, and related frameworks, integrating LLM-powered automation into customer-facing supply chain operations

Design microservices architectures for integration layers: API gateway patterns, service decomposition, inter-service communication, containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), and cloud-native deployment on AWS, Azure, or GCP

Develop and maintain APIs (REST, GraphQL) and integration middleware connecting customer enterprise systems to the FourKites platform

Own technical proof-of-concepts for new integration patterns, AI-powered workflows, and platform capabilities, taking them from prototype to production-ready

Integration Architecture & Standards

Define reference architectures and reusable integration patterns that scale across customers, covering traditional EDI/file-based integrations (X12, EDIFACT, flat file, SFTP/AS2) through modern event-driven and AI-augmented approaches

Establish engineering standards for data quality, observability, error handling, retry logic, and scalability across all customer integrations

Drive technical decisions on integration approach selection: real-time streaming vs. batch ETL, synchronous vs. asynchronous patterns, push vs. pull models, grounded in customer system constraints and business requirements

Evaluate emerging technologies and integration patterns, building team capability in AI/ML engineering, cloud-native architectures, and modern data infrastructure

Strategic Customer Partnership & Pre-Sales

Build and maintain trusted-advisor relationships with technical and executive stakeholders at strategic accounts, spanning the full lifecycle from initial scoping through production optimization

Provide solutions architecture consultation during pre-sales: scoping complex integration and AI agent deployments, identifying technical risks, sizing effort, and translating platform capabilities into customer business value

Partner with R&D Teams to shape the platform roadmap based on field experience, advocating for integration-layer and AI capability improvements grounded in real customer implementation data

Contribute to external thought leadership: reference architectures, technical blog posts, conference presentations, and customer-facing best practice documentation

Technical Leadership & Mentorship

Serve as the senior escalation point for the hardest integration and AI engineering challenges, both internal and customer-facing

Mentor customer engineers (onshore and offshore) through design reviews, code reviews, pairing sessions, and architecture walkthroughs, raising the technical bar across the team

Lead by building: prove out new approaches hands-on before asking the team to adopt them

Define and track integration quality and engineering productivity metrics

About the Team

The Customer Engineering team is the technical backbone of FourKites' customer implementations, enabling Fortune 500 companies to connect our AI-powered platform with their enterprise systems. Working in close partnership with Professional Services, the team architects and delivers complex integrations spanning ERP, OMS, WMS, and TMS platforms, turning data silos into unified supply chain intelligence. As FourKites evolves toward AI-first solutions with agentic capabilities, this team plays a critical role in ensuring seamless data flow, integration reliability, and technical excellence that powers autonomous decision-making and real-time orchestration.

Who you are

Required

12+ years in software engineering, data engineering, or solutions architecture, with significant time in customer-facing roles designing and delivering enterprise-grade systems

Hands-on builder: you write production code, build data pipelines, debug distributed systems, and architect solutions, not just review them

Deep expertise in data pipeline and messaging infrastructure: Kafka, RabbitMQ, SQS/SNS, or comparable; hands-on experience designing streaming and batch data flows at scale

Strong API engineering skills: designing, building, and scaling REST and GraphQL APIs; experience with API gateway patterns, rate limiting, versioning, and authentication protocols

Hands-on AI engineering experience: building agentic workflows and LLM-powered applications using LangGraph, LangChain, or equivalent frameworks; practical understanding of prompt engineering, tool orchestration, retrieval-augmented generation, and agent evaluation

Microservices architecture expertise: service decomposition, inter-service communication (gRPC, async messaging), containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), and cloud-native deployment on AWS, Azure, or GCP

3+ years of experience in logistics, supply chain, or transportation technology; working understanding of supply chain data flows (orders, shipments, inventory, tracking events, carrier integrations)

Working knowledge of enterprise integration patterns: EDI (X12, EDIFACT), middleware platforms (MuleSoft, Dell Boomi, Informatica), file-based protocols (SFTP, AS2), and data transformation/ETL

Solutions architect mindset: you start with the customer's business problem, design the right architecture, and can present the approach to both engineers and C-suite stakeholders with equal clarity

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Math, or equivalent experience

Preferred

Experience with enterprise ERP/TMS/WMS platforms (SAP, Oracle, Blue Yonder, Manhattan) and their integration surfaces

Track record of building reusable integration frameworks, accelerators, or internal developer tools adopted across multiple customer engagements

Experience leading technical teams through platform transformations: API modernization, monolith-to-microservices migration, cloud-native adoption

External thought leadership experience: conference talks, published technical content, open-source contributions, or community engagement

Familiarity with supply chain visibility, control tower, or real-time tracking platforms

Travel Requirement

Up to 30% (customer sites, critical implementations, team locations)

Location

Chicago (preferred) or remote with regular Chicago travel

Compensation

The expected annual base salary range for this role is $140,000 - $170,000. Actual compensation will be determined based on several factors, including but not limited to experience, qualifications, skills, and business needs. In addition to base salary, this position is eligible for bonus and incentive compensation as well as participation in FourKites' employee stock option program.

Benefits

FourKites provides competitive compensation with stock options, outstanding benefits and a collaborative culture for all employees around the globe. To help you be your best, we have 5 global recharge days, in addition to generous PTO and standard holidays. Parental leave for all parents, an annual wellness stipend and volunteer days also provide you with time and resources for self care and to care for others. Throughout the year, FourKites sets aside time during the workday to learn and celebrate diversity. We're always listening for new ways to support everyone in and out of the office.

Benefits include:

Medical, Dental & Vision benefits starting on first day of employment

401k Retirement savings with employer match

Bonus and incentive compensation as well as employee stock option program

Employer paid life insurance and short term disability insurance

Generous PTO, global recharge days, and volunteer days

Paid parental leave for all parents

Family planning and inclusive wellbeing resources

Technology reimbursement

Commuter benefits for in-office employees (Chicago)

Annual Wellness Stipend

Ongoing learning & development opportunities

About FourKites

FourKites, the leader in AI-driven supply chain transformation for global enterprises and pioneer of real-time visibility, turns supply chain data into automated action. FourKites Intelligent Control Tower breaks down enterprise silos by creating a real-time digital twin of orders, shipments, inventory and assets. This comprehensive view, combined with AI-powered digital workers, enables companies to prevent disruptions, automate routine tasks and optimize performance across their supply chain. FourKites processes over 3.2 million supply chain events daily, from purchase orders to final delivery, helping 1,600-plus global brands prevent disruptions, make faster decisions and move from reactive tracking to proactive supply chain orchestration. For more information, visit www.fourkites.com .

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FourKites is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. If you're excited about this role but don't meet every requirement, we encourage you to apply.