Senior Applied Scientist

THE ROLE & THE TEAM

The Content Personalization & Governance team at Zalando provides personalized content selection and ranking for Zalando’s discovery surfaces. A key part of our mission is to drive Zalando's evolution into an inspiring ecosystem that seamlessly integrates shopping, storytelling, and style inspiration through the Home Feed - the platform's first touchpoint with millions of active fashion customers. The team sits at the critical intersection of algorithmic relevancy and business value.

Using state-of-the‑art deep learning and reinforcement learning models, we are building intelligent content discovery systems that maximize immediate monetization while driving long‑term customer loyalty.

As a Senior Applied Scientist, you will play a central role in building and scaling the next generation of these discovery systems across the platform. In this position, you will join a high‑impact, multi‑disciplinary science and engineering team and lead high‑impact research and productionization initiatives, combining recommender systems, ranking algorithms, and economic trade‑off modeling to shape the future of personalized discovery at scale.

• Develop and deploy state‑of‑the‑art Deep Learning and Reinforcement Learning models to power real‑time content delivery algorithms across high‑traffic surfaces.

• Formulate and solve multi‑objective ranking and allocation problems at scale, optimizing dynamic trade‑offs between short‑term conversion, long‑term customer engagement, and business monetization.

• Contribute to long‑term research roadmaps for personalized content discovery and ranking, translating strategic business objectives and governance goals into concrete scientific problems.

• Partner closely with Principal Scientists, Data/ML Engineers, and Product Managers to deliver state‑of‑the‑art machine learning solutions to production navigating high technical uncertainty and seamlessly aligning across stakeholders.

• Act as a mentor and technical sparring partner to scientists across the team, advocating for rigorous experimental methodologies and actively contributing to Zalando’s broader science community.

• An advanced degree (M.Sc., Ph.D.) or equivalent industry experience in Machine Learning, Applied Economics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Statistics, or a related quantitative field.

• 6+ years of applied science experience leading end‑to‑end AI/ML solutions from ideation and research to large‑scale production, ideally combined with a strong publication record of advancing state‑of‑the‑art methods for real‑world applications.

• Deep hands‑on expertise in Deep Learning, Recommender Systems, Reinforcement Learning/Bandits, Multi‑Objective Optimization, and Causal ML coupled with extensive experience designing and evaluating complex A/B experiments.

• Proven leadership in shaping scientific roadmaps and collaborating across Product, Science, Engineering, and senior leadership to discover business opportunities and solve complex problems with scientific solutions.

• Strong technical proficiency in Python and Deep Learning frameworks (e.g., Tensor Flow, PyTorch) for RL, and modern AI coding assistants and agents, along with hands‑on experience building and scaling production recommender and ranking engines on cloud platforms (AWS).

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 Zalando Lounge, discounts from external partners

• 2 paid volunteering days a year

• 27 days of vacation a year to start

• Relocation assistance available…