The routing engineer
OpenAn operations researcher who turns routing into a model anyone can check: which qualified suppliers and certified hubs an order uses, at what landed cost and lead time, and why.
An open invitation, not a vacancy: several people can take it at once, and it carries no number until you commit to something specific. This page says what Moduloa hopes for and where a first contribution could start.
Why Moduloa needs this
Routing is the thesis in one step: a product goes to whichever certified hub wins on cost of production, energy, logistics, tariffs, risk and proximity to demand, and wages are not a column. Today the routing page is a worked example across three fictional hubs with no real hub behind it, and it places a blueprint at a hub while taking supplier geography as an input, rather than choosing suppliers and hubs together. Term T-07 says prices, schedules and pilot outcomes come from the OS and no human overrides one for a customer, and carrying that into routing only holds if the rules are published and every decision is logged with its reasons.
What you would bring
- Optimization models used in production: network design, scheduling or allocation, in MILP, constraint programming or heuristics you can defend.
- Multi-objective trade-offs stated plainly: landed cost against lead time against risk, where there is no single best answer.
- Supply data as it actually arrives: missing lead times, MOQs, capacity calendars and quotes that go stale.
- Explainable decisions: a log a customer or an auditor can replay and get the same answer.
- Tools such as OR-Tools, HiGHS, Gurobi or Pyomo, used on real problems rather than coursework.
Tasks that suit you
Each has a plain test for done. Ask to commit to one: name what you will deliver and a date no more than three months after it is accepted. Several people can work on the same task, each with its own deliverable.
- C-03 Subscription formula v0.1 · Three to four weeks · Ask to commit to C-03 →
- B-01 The routing problem, stated · About two weeks · Ask to commit to B-01 →
- B-02 Open data for routing · One to two weeks · Ask to commit to B-02 →
- B-03 Split and learn · Three to four weeks · Ask to commit to B-03 →
Other first deliverables
Each is specific enough that by its date anyone can tell whether it was delivered. Some are a task above in a smaller form. Name one, or a better one.
- A formal statement of the routing problem against the eleven inputs on the routing page: decision variables, hard constraints such as qualification, capacity and lead time, and the objective.
- A small reproducible model that routes the fictional EX-100 (800 units a year, demand in Northern Europe, a critical long-lead sensor) across the three example hubs, with a decision log showing why Hub A wins and what would flip it.
- A written test, using that model, of the economics page's claim that two chained hubs capture nearly all the protection of many.
What this is, and is not
Not a job, and not a live network to optimize: no hub, no order and no routing data exist yet, so the work is the model and its published rules. On its own a seat carries no pay, no equity and no supplier position, and any paid work is agreed separately.
When your commitment is accepted, it shows on the task and on your seat card, and a first commitment takes the next permanent number on the register, with your name, a link and your date. When the work is delivered in the open you are aboard and a certificate is issued. Nothing is paid for a seat and none is for sale: on its own a seat carries no equity and no supplier position, and any paid work is agreed separately, on its own terms. The entry stays either way: a commitment not delivered by its date is marked lapsed and dated, never removed.
Pick a task that suits you and ask to commit to it, or name your own first deliverable: what you will deliver and a date no more than three months after it is accepted. Write to shk@moduloa.com, or use the link on any task, which opens the contact page with the subject filled in. It does not have to be large. It has to be specific enough that anyone can tell by its date whether it was delivered.