Expeditors International, the Seattle-area logistics company known for never laying off employees, cut about 230 technology-related jobs in the region on Monday, ending a tradition that had been a point of pride for much of the company’s history.
The layoffs hit software developers, quality-assurance testers, project managers, business analysts and others across Expeditors’ offices in downtown Seattle, Bellevue, Lynnwood and Federal Way, according to laid-off employees and others with knowledge of the situation.
Company officials did not respond to messages from GeekWire seeking comment Monday afternoon and evening. The reasons for the layoffs were not clear.
The cuts in the Seattle area represent about 15% of the company’s global tech workforce. Posts on Reddit and LinkedIn indicate that there may have been some additional job cuts outside the region. Expeditors employed about 1,500 people in information systems worldwide as of March 31, up from about 1,360 a year before, according to its first-quarter financial report.
Expeditors was founded in Seattle in 1979 as a single-office ocean freight forwarder and went public on the Nasdaq in 1984. Its stock now trades on the New York Stock Exchange. The company has about 20,000 employees worldwide and posted $11.07 billion in revenue in 2025, with profits of $810 million.
Under Peter J. Rose, a co-founder who served as CEO from 1988 to 2013, it built a reputation for not laying off employees. It held to that practice through the 2008-09 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, and even as a wave of layoffs swept the technology industry in 2022 and 2023.
The cuts follow major leadership changes. Daniel Wall, who started in 1987 as a messenger and worked his way up over nearly four decades, became CEO in April 2025, succeeding Jeffrey Musser. The tech organization is run by Courtney Hawkins, senior vice president and CIO, who joined Expeditors in 2024, after roles at Starbucks, Nike, Nordstrom and Zulily.
One former employee said there had been hints about the possible cuts for several months, including discussion of a restructuring plan and new job titles in the technology organization.
Another clue, in retrospect, was a change to the company’s website: As recently as January of this year, Expeditors’ online corporate history page credited “our no layoff policy” for making 2010 the company’s best year ever, according to a version of the page captured by the Internet Archive.
By last month, the page had been changed to call it “our short-term no layoff policy.”
