By Robert Packett | Senior Director of Operations Excellence and Engineering at Coupang Fulfillment Services
Whenever I talk to people about AI in logistics, the conversation almost always jumps straight to robots. Everyone wants to hear about the hardware. Almost no one asks about the backbone behind it. But when you operate at scale, every machine is only as smart as the people, data and network that connects it.
At Coupang, that network carries a big promise: millions of products, delivered in as little as half a day. Our AI predicts demand before customers order and finds the fastest path to their door in seconds. Those decisions come to life inside our state-of-the-art fulfillment centers, where integrated data and AI orchestrate fleets of autonomous mobile robots, automated picking and storage as one optimized system. I'm lucky to lead a global team of engineers and data scientists, spanning many disciplines and countries, who design, build and continuously advance that automation.
Together, we built the digital backbone that connected automation and equipment from many, many vendors into one standardized ecosystem. That ecosystem is now the foundation of a data stack that keeps growing and evolving. A data lake unifies all data sources, including real-time sensor inputs through advanced vision technology and system performance from our technology partners. Every signal our machines send and every insight our engineers contribute flows into it, while agentic AI layers continuously clean, standardize and analyze what comes in. The result is a living knowledge base of our automation network that gets smarter every day.
Now we're putting that intelligence to work so our network can learn the way Coupang's AI does:
• Machines that see for themselves. We're piloting AI vision that monitors our equipment in real time and spots the earliest signs of change, keeping our systems running at peak performance.
• Intelligence that compounds every day. Expanding pipelines feed new data into a connected AI network spanning our entire automation footprint. Layered AI models learn from our engineers' feedback every day, shaping customized reliability strategies that are dynamic and prescriptive, while AI agents put that collective expertise in the hands of anyone, on any shift, at any site.
• Growing the next generation. We're partnering with universities and mechatronics programs on curricula and career paths for the engineers who will build what comes next.
So, the next time someone asks me about the robots, I'll tell them about the backbone. Coupang innovates with AI to deliver the best commerce experience on earth. My team's part is building intelligence beneath it: technology that learns from our people and amplifies what they can do, so customers get the speed, selection and prices they count on every day.
Employee stories |
Paul Stroup, Senior Director of Data Science and Engineering for Fulfillment Optimization within Global Operations Technology at Coupang, leads global teams of data scientists, ML engineers, and software engineers who are transforming how fulfillment operates at scale.
Employee stories |
Coupang’s technology interns gained hands-on experience turning academic knowledge into real-world impact through meaningful projects, mentorship, and collaboration.
Employee stories |
From helping launch Coupang Taiwan’s first fulfillment center—and packing its very first Rocket Delivery order—to building the infrastructure that supports its continued growth, Nick has grown alongside the business while taking on increasingly complex challenges.