Ready to Join the Supply Chain Revolution? This B2B AI Startup is Hiring

Every day, some of the world’s most entrepreneurial minds ponder over how they can improve supply chains to move goods faster, cheaper, and more reliably. Artificial intelligence (AI) has been one potential answer in recent years, with startups racing to develop AI-based solutions to solve supply chain problems.

As such startups grow, they will need to increase their ranks. For individuals who love technology and working in a fast-paced environment, there is no better time to join a startup and be part of the supply chain revolution.

Read on to learn about this Singapore-based B2B startup aims to revolutionise supply chains with AI, and what it is like to work with their team.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted supply chains all over the world: according to Statista, around 68% of global retailers surveyed experienced moderate to heavy disruption to their supply chains as a result of the pandemic.

As businesses continue to tread these unchartered waters, the need to ensure greater supply chain resilience has only become greater—and predictive analytics platform Portcast is planning to help with just that.

“We use advanced data sets like satellite data, weather, economic patterns, and shipping data, combined with proprietary machine learning, to predict real-time and more accurately how much cargo is moving across the world and when it will arrive,” shares Nidhi Gupta, one of Portcast’s two co-founders.

Gupta explains that this will enable manufacturers to plan their inventories better, reduce costs and manual effort, and improve customer satisfaction. To better assist maritime logistics companies in managing their shipments, the three-year-old startup is looking to hire an Engineering Lead.

Applicants keen to join Portcast should possess certain soft skills. One of these, as Portcast growth marketer Lee Jia Yung shares, is resourcefulness.

“Being able to think of different ideas to achieve the goal, with very little or no resources, is definitely something that I think is a core component of someone who wants to join our team,” says Lee.

Such resourcefulness ties in with how Portcast’s flat hierarchy results in everyone being directly responsible for the output that they produce. At the startup, employees are empowered to own their work, make decisions, and learn new skills on the job.

For example, when Lee first joined Portcast in February 2020, he was new to search engine optimisation and referral marketing, so he spent time on YouTube learning these on his own.

But that’s not to say that Portcast threw him in at the deep end to flounder: the startup also engaged an experienced business coach to guide them in running 360-degree marketing campaigns.

This helped Lee see things from a “big picture point-of-view”, apart from having the “micro” level ability to execute various marketing disciplines.

Of course, having the right technical skills are also a must to thrive in Portcast’s product team, shares software engineer Akash Jain, who has been with the startup since February 2019.

“The most primary requirement to have will be having experience over Python-based frameworks because our stack is based on Python,” explains Jain. Applicants should also have expertise in: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon Simple Queue Services (SQS), QTask, and Docker, to name a few.

On the technical front, however Jain believes that the most “fitting” candidate would have full-stack experience. He relates how Portcast’s recent decision to hire a full-stack engineer in India has turned out well, as the new hire has been able to provide a bird’s eye view over what could be optimised.

This resulted in the startup making improvements in not just its backend processes, but also to complex parts of its user interfaces.

At Portcast, new knowledge doesn’t remain siloed among different teams. As Jain shares, the teams work “collaboratively” and readily share information that they need with each other.

This collaborative work culture even results in collective fun, as the staff would gather for Friday drink sessions once a month. Although the pandemic has required them to work from home, Jain fondly shares how everyone remains bonded through Zoom calls and the posting of memes in their communication channels.

The Portcast team having drinks

Gupta echoes this sentiment, sharing how as a young, cross-cultural startup, Portcast employees “tend to be friends rather than just colleagues, and connect outside of work for hikes and get-togethers”.

That’s not to say that it will be all fun and games. Gupta promises challenging work for new hires to the Portcast team.

“Our investment and belief in data science, engineering and user experience will give you the chance to work on the biggest and hardest logistics industry problems in new ways,” she says.

“If you are energetic, willing to take responsibility and ownership, love solving problems and are self-driven, we'd love to speak with you!”

Although the pandemic has resulted in much global uncertainty, one thing remains clear: the AI B2B sector is abounding with opportunities. Be it for advancing maritime logistics like Portcast, ecommerce like SoyakaAI, or other industries, startups are eager to hire to accelerate their growth and potential impact.

The only question that remains is: are you ready to join the supply chain revolution?

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