Principal Applied Scientist - Agentic Systems

THE ROLE & THE TEAM

Agentic Systems is building Zalando Assistant, our own agentic fashion assistant, with the goal of making it the starting point for fashion. We combine state-of-the-art machine learning (including GenAI/LLMs, agentic systems, personalization, and neural search) with Zalando's catalog, data, and fashion expertise to deliver an experience that inspires customers in a new way. The team has grown, and we're looking for a Principal Applied Scientist to lead research-related projects and raise our best practices. You will take on the hardest scientific problems in the product, set technical direction across teams, and work with a group of exceptional scientists and engineers to build machine learning products that improve the experience of millions of customers.

WHAT WE'D LOVE YOU TO DO (AND LOVE DOING)

• Lead research projects end to end, from problem framing and approach to experimentation, production deployment, and monitoring.
• Shape the science stack for Zalando Assistant so that it aligns with product strategy, and drive architectural and design principles across teams.
• Define and drive the scientific roadmap for complex fashion and agentic-assistant challenges, ensuring we apply state-of-the-art solutions where they create customer value.
• Contribute to our scientific standing through internal peer reviews and, where appropriate, external publications at top-tier conferences and journals.
• Raise the bar for how the team works: set best practices in experimentation, evaluation, and statistical rigor, and make sure results reflect real improvements rather than noise.
• Mentor scientists across the team, review their technical work, and share knowledge with Zalando's wider science community.
• Partner closely with applied science leaders, engineering, and product managers to deliver machine learning solutions to our customers and uncover new opportunities for growth.

WE'D LOVE TO MEET YOU IF

• PhD in NLP, deep learning, search & recommendation, or a related field (or equivalent experience), 10+ years of industry experience, including leading research or applied science work at scale.
• Experience in developing long-term research roadmaps and applying scientific methods to tackle research problems.
• A strong inclination to collaborate with product, science, and engineering managers and solve business problems through scientific solutions.
• Extensive track record of addressing large-scale real-world problems using machine learning throughout the entire product cycle, encompassing problem analysis, data processing, literature review, production deployment, monitoring, and maintenance.
• Strong publication records at top-tier venues such as SIGIR, KDD, WWW, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML, JMLR, etc.
• Extensive hands-on experience in deep learning with proficiency in Python and frameworks like PyTorch or TensorFlow.

OUR OFFER

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.

• 27 days of holiday a year to start for full-time employees (+1 day for every calendar year up to 30 days)
• 40% off fashion and beauty products sold and shipped by Zalando, 30% off Lounge by Zalando, discounts from external partners
• Family support, including counselling and dedicated services for parents and carers
• Company pension scheme
• Employee shares programme
• Health and wellbeing options, including Wellhub & SportAbo in Zurich)
• Swiss SBB Halbtax (half-fare card)
• Mental health support and coaching
• Development through our training platform and biannual peer-to-peer review
• 2 paid volunteering days a year
• Relocation assistance (subject to prior agreement)