June 3, 2025•by Quang Tran

Employee Feature: Founding Engineer Anh Mai

Back when FleetWorks was just an ambitious idea bouncing around a shared San Francisco office, Anh Mai was already mapping out the technical vision that would soon transform trucking logistics. As the company’s first—and for a long while, its only—engineer, Anh didn't just write code; he laid the groundwork for an AI-driven freight marketplace that's now generating over 7 figures of revenue annually and recently attracted a large Series A investment.

From Weekend Projects to FleetWorks' Founding Engineer

Before FleetWorks, Anh was already deep into solving engineering challenges. One weekend, he developed a system integrating real-time performance monitoring for truck drivers, cutting empty miles driven by trucks by 20% for a local fleet. When he crossed paths with FleetWorks' co-founders, it was clear Anh’s ability to untangle complex routing issues aligned perfectly with the founders vision of building an AI enabled marketplace that matches truck drivers with jobs.

Just two weeks after their initial meeting, Anh had:

• Designed a scalable microservices architecture using Node.js, Kubernetes, and a robust Postgres/PostGIS backend, ensuring components like rate negotiation and load matching could independently scale as business demands increased.

• Built the first prototype of an AI-driven negotiation agent. Leveraging decision trees and early TensorFlow models, he proved that an AI assistant could handle roughly 30% of straightforward freight lanes, cutting booking times by half during initial tests.

These early wins cemented FleetWorks’ commitment to an AI-first strategy. Today, Anh’s prototype has evolved into a powerful negotiation engine managing thousands of carrier interactions daily.

Key Contributions That Defined FleetWorks’ Success

Anh’s impact extends far beyond software development. He has shaped the company's product vision, mentored new hires, and made pivotal architectural choices enabling the platform's exponential growth:

• Advanced Negotiation Workflow: Anh designed and implemented a sophisticated negotiation process integrated with Twilio's programmable voice API, enabling smooth transitions between automated interactions and human intervention as needed. This innovation alone reduced operational costs by 25% within six months of going live.

• Robust Data Infrastructure: He architected a distributed data pipeline built on Kafka, providing real-time analytics from dispatch calls. The insights derived from this pipeline have guided strategic decisions, such as adding new equipment types and expanding into international lanes, directly boosting annual revenue by 40%.

• Mentorship and Team Development: Anh recruited and trained three senior engineers, establishing a collaborative pair-programming culture and initiating an internal “AI Safety” committee focused on addressing biases in model recommendations.

• Thought Leadership in AI Ethics: Anh spearheaded internal workshops on ethical AI usage in logistics.

Looking Forward: Pioneering the Future of Freight

Anh isn’t resting on past successes. Over the coming year, he plans to:

• Lead predictive load-matching research in collaboration with large logistics companies such as Capstone logistics, developing advanced deep-learning models to forecast carrier availability weeks ahead.

• Open-source critical components of FleetWorks' negotiation system under the Apache 2.0 license, promoting transparency and industry-wide collaboration.

• Support emerging startups by offering his expertise pro bono as an AI advisor, providing architectural reviews to promising logistics ventures in early stages.

Anh continues to innovate, driving FleetWorks forward and reshaping the freight brokerage landscape one breakthrough at a time.