Import-Export Agent

A typical week tends to mix import entry preparation, export documentation and AES filings, carrier coordination, customs and OGA exception handling, and client communication on shipment status. You'll often work tight cutoff windows for vessel sailings and flight loadings, while keeping multiple shipments in different stages organized. Trade policy changes — tariffs, exclusions, FTAs — affect work week to week.

Coordination involves shippers and importers, carriers, customs brokers and CBP, partner government agencies (FDA, USDA, FCC depending on commodity), and counterparts overseas. Communication across time zones shapes work patterns. The breadth of needing both import and export expertise is what distinguishes the role.

People who tend to thrive here are detail-rigorous, comfortable with deadline pressure, and energized by working both sides of cross-border trade. If you need quiet focus or low-stakes environments, the always-something-shipping rhythm can grind. If you find satisfaction in being the person who keeps a client's international supply chain flowing cleanly in both directions, the role tends to feel meaningfully operational and globally connected.