Senior Principal Applied Scientist

Senior Principal Applied Scientist

Join Zalando's Discovery Team in Fashion Innovation

The Discovery team at Zalando is committed to enhancing customers' fashion discovery journey using advanced technologies. We are building the next generation of our discovery systems with cutting-edge natural language processing (NLP) and information retrieval (IR) techniques, focusing on transformer-based deep neural networks and large language models (LLMs).

Your Role as a Senior Principal Applied Scientist

As a Senior Principal Applied Scientist, you will tackle challenging fashion-related problems through innovative approaches. You will play a pivotal role in driving our scientific roadmap, collaborating with a team of exceptional scientists and engineers to develop state-of-the-art machine learning models that improve the experience of over 51 million customers.

Key Responsibilities

Utilize your extensive scientific expertise in researching, deploying, and architecting machine learning solutions in NLP and IR to enhance the inspiration journey of millions of customers in large-scale projects. Collaborate with various teams to build a cutting-edge technology stack that aligns with product strategy and influences architectural and design principles.

Develop long-term research roadmaps that span multiple product areas and address concrete business goals. As part of the leadership team, act as a sparring partner and trusted advisor to Zalando's senior leadership, advising on strategic investments and decisions.

Mentor and guide senior and principal scientists, fostering knowledge sharing within Zalando’s science community. Forge strong partnerships with applied science leaders and product managers to deliver innovative machine learning solutions and uncover new growth opportunities.

What We Are Looking For

• PhD in NLP, IR, machine learning, or related fields, with at least 8 years of industry experience, particularly in deep learning-based NLP and/or IR methods.
• Proven experience in leading and shaping the scientific roadmap for teams working on products spanning multiple areas.
• Ability to identify new business opportunities, collaborating with product, science, and engineering managers to solve business problems through scientific solutions.
• Extensive track record of addressing real-world problems using machine learning throughout the product cycle.
• Expertise in deep learning with strong proficiency in Python and frameworks like PyTorch or TensorFlow. Familiarity with cloud computing platforms such as AWS is also required.
• Strong publication record in top-tier venues such as ACL, NAACL, EMNLP, SIGIR, KDD, WWW, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML, JMLR, etc.

Inclusive by Design

At Zalando, we are committed to an inclusive hiring process. We do not discriminate based on gender identity, sexual orientation, personal expression, ethnicity, religious beliefs, or disability status. You can exclude your picture, age, or marital status from your application. We assess candidates solely on their qualifications and merit.

We strive to provide a great candidate experience. Please inform us of any accommodations you might need, so we can support you throughout the hiring process.

Check out our diversity & inclusion strategy:

Learn about our employee resource groups:

Benefits & Perks

• Work remotely from abroad for 30 working days per year.
• Access to the employee shares program.
• 40% shopping discount on products shipped and sold by Zalando, and 30% discount on Zalando Lounge.
• Discounts from various external partners.
• SBB Half Fare Travelcard.
• 4 weeks paid paternity leave and 17 weeks paid maternity leave.
• 3 fully-paid child sick days per year.
• Free counseling and assistance services via the Fürstenberg Institute.

About Zalando

Join Zalando, a pioneer in e-commerce, on our journey to becoming the leading fashion platform in Europe. We connect customers, brands, and partners across 23 markets, driving digital and sustainable solutions for fashion, logistics, advertising, and research. Join our diverse team and help bring fashion to more than 48 million active customers.