Senior Applied Scientist; Economics, Experimentation & Platform Analytics at Zalando Search

THE ROLE AND THE TEAM

As a Senior Applied Scientist in the Search & Discovery team at Zalando, you will serve as the insights, measurement and experimentation backbone of the Visibility program. You will investigate and design marketplace dynamics, develop causal inference frameworks, and conduct exploratory data analysis that spans Search, Catalog, Recommendations, and the broader S&D platform. Your work will directly inform strategic trade‑off decisions around Zalando’s platform dynamics and health, turning data into insights that shape product development and program direction.

Unlike a purely experimentation‑focused role, this position has an equally important mandate in platform health monitoring and opportunity analysis: identifying structural shifts in visibility outcomes, diagnosing their root causes, and quantifying the business implications for Zalando's marketplace. You will collaborate with Applied Scientists, Data Engineers, Product Managers, and commercial stakeholders across S&D and beyond. Find out more about our team here:

• Design and execute analytical frameworks for the Visibility domain, covering KPI & metrics definition for unbiased platform health.
• Support visibility interaction by complex target and trade‑off investigations.
• Lead an experimentation roadmap with a focus on the relationship between short‑term experiment signals and long‑term platform health effects and dynamics.
• Conduct exploratory, hypothesis‑driven data analysis to identify visibility opportunities and structural risks across S&D and beyond, translating analytical findings into actionable insights for product and commercial stakeholders.
• Apply quasi‑experimental and causal inference methods to observational data — including Double Machine Learning, difference‑in‑differences, and causal forests — to establish causal relationships where randomized experiments are infeasible.
• Build and maintain platform health monitoring frameworks that track visibility KPIs over time, detect anomalies, and surface early signals of marketplace imbalances before they become business issues.
• Use economic modeling and first‑principles reasoning to support trade‑off decisions between competing visibility objectives.

• Master or above (PhD) in quantitative economics, computer science or a related quantitative discipline with a strong foundation in econometrics, statistics and computational methods.
• You possess deep expertise in experimentation design and quasi‑experimental research methods such as Double Machine Learning, difference‑in‑differences, synthetic control, and causal forests.
• You have strong experience conducting exploratory data analysis at scale and communicating findings clearly to both technical and non‑technical audiences, including senior leadership.
• You are proficient in Python and SQL, with hands‑on experience using Jupyter Notebooks, Airflow, PySpark, Databricks, and Git.
• You are comfortable with ML methods and frameworks (scikit‑learn, PyTorch) and are able to apply them to causal and predictive modeling tasks.
• You regularly use AI‑based analytical tools and maintain a mindset of constant exploration regarding new developments in the field.
• You demonstrate strong general scientific problem‑solving skills and the ability to scope ambiguous analytical questions into structured research plans.

Zalando provides a range of benefits, here’s an overview of what you can expect. Ask your Talent Acquisition Partner to learn more about what we offer.

• Employee shares program
• 40% off fashion and beauty products sold and shipped by Zalando, 30% off Lounge by Zalando, discounts from external partners
• 2 paid volunteering days a year
• Hybrid working model with up to 60% remote per week, actual practice is up to each team to best support their collaboration
• Work from abroad for up to 30 working days a year
• 27 days of vacation a year to start for full‑time employees
• Relocation assistance available (subject to prior agreement)
• Family services, including counseling and support
• Health and wellbeing options (including Wellhub, formerly Gympass)
• Mental health support and coaching…