Head of Applied Science - Pricing & Assortment Steering Algorithms (all genders)

THE ROLE & THE TEAM
Zalando Lounge is the fastest growing sales channel of Zalando. In 2021 we grew by ca. 49%, breaching more than one billion EUR in yearly revenue for the first time. That's 14% of total Zalando Group revenue.

At the core of our high-growth strategy is pricing and assortment steering. As a shopping club, Zalando Lounge's main premise is to offer exclusive bargain deals with limited availability to fashion conscious customers. Machine learning, econometrics, and operations research drive our efforts to optimize billions of EUR in discount investments, as well as the curation of the tens of thousands of SKUs we bring online per day.

As the Head of Applied Science & Engineering for the Zalando Lounge's algorithmic pricing and assortment steering teams, you will expand the team with a future facing structure, hire senior talents, and collaborate with product management to define roadmaps. You will also provide leadership, technical direction, and coaching to mixed teams of scientists, engineers and analysts, actively coaching and fostering the management skills of new leaders. You will be part of the multidisciplinary leadership team setting the direction and shaping the culture of Zalando Lounge's Data Platform, Pricing and AI organization.

Join us during an exciting time of growth and intriguing strategic challenges such as optimized assortment curation, holistic steering across discount levers, and incrementally measurement.
INCLUSIVE BY DESIGN
At Zalando, our vision is to be the starting point for fashion - one that is inclusive bydesign. We only assess candidates based on qualifications, merit, and business needs. We welcome applications from people of all gender identities, sexual orientations, personal expressions, racial identities, ethnicities, religious beliefs, and disability statuses. We only want to know why you're great for this role, so please avoid including your picture, age, and marital status in your CV as well.

We want to provide you with a great candidate experience. Please feel free to inform us of any accommodations you may need, so we can best support and assist you throughout the hiring process.

do.BETTER - our diversity & inclusion strategy: https://corporate.zalando.com/en/diversity-inclusion
Our employee resource groups: https://corporate.zalando.com/en/diversity-inclusion/our-employee-resource-groups
WHY YOU SHOULD BE INTERESTED

• Leadership: You will build and manage an organization and culture with highly effective collaboration between applied scientists, engineers, product managers, commercial stakeholders, and more. As a leader of leads, you will take ownership for the performance management, calibration, career development, and coaching of team members and provide close mentorship to first-time leaders, actively growing their management capabilities. Attract and develop applied scientists and engineers. Sustain a strong research and delivery culture while promoting customer focus and scientific problem solving.
• Define Strategy: Define the long term strategy and guide research roadmaps for your teams, proactively prioritizing resources across delivery teams and acting as a gatekeeper and bar raiser for incoming product opportunities. Align with business stakeholders, product management, and other engineering and applied science leaders. Facilitate communication and decision-making between different delivery and stakeholder teams and act as a sparring partner to product managers to ensure seamless integration of our products with downstream services.
• Drive Innovation: Guide teams working in the pricing and assortment steering domains to define, build, and launch scalable scientific software solutions with high business impact. Assume accountability for the long-term architectural roadmap of your teams and allocate resources to ensure compliance and operational stability including incident response and following through on post-mortems. Ensure architectural alignment and operational excellence across the teams.
• Growth and Scale Mindset: You will shape the science and engineering culture across Zalando by developing and hiring engineering talent and facilitating engineering processes that create remarkable impact for our customers and partners at scale. You are comfortable working in an emerging business team, helping distill customer problems into meaningful actions. Act as an evangelist for the teams' work, communicating progress proactively against key KPIs to a broad range of stakeholders across the company.

WE'D LOVE TO MEET YOU IF

• Leading Leaders: You are a strong, egoless, and empathetic leader who excels at developing, coaching, and mentoring applied science and engineering leaders and individual contributors. You have a good understanding of technical landscapes and a proven track record leading diverse, cross-functional teams of applied scientists and engineers.
• Execute & Deliver: You have a proven track record managing engineering and applied science teams to deliver highly impactful data-driven products. You have several years of practical experience in two of the following domains: Machine Learning, Forecasting, Causal Inference, Algorithmic Pricing, Operations Research as well as experience working across all stages of the applied science project lifecycle, from discovery to production. You have a proven ability to set and uphold strong MLOps and data quality standards and are a bar raiser in terms of research excellence.
• Communication Skills: You are a strong collaborator with a proven ability to work with non-technical business stakeholders to translate business requirements into data driven solutions and to influence decision-making at all levels and in a variety of contexts. You bring experience working with different disciplines, subject matter experts, and levels of leadership. You have strong written and verbal communication skills in English.
• Scope & Impact: You have a demonstrated ability to relate to customers, identify and understand their underlying motivations and needs. You have the ability to zoom out and identify synergies and opportunities to leverage the latest industry advancements in applied science and data engineering.

ZALANDO BENEFITS
Career Development

• We offer peer-to-peer performance reviews twice a year
• Learn and develop through our extensive Zalando training platform
• Join regular all-hands, team meetings, Q&A-sessions, and quarterly anonymous employee surveys to ask your questions and provide your feedback
• Support from an international team of experts; mentoring and professional development opportunities

Wellbeing

• 2 days paid leave per year for volunteering
• Minimum of 27 holiday days per calendar year
• Online sports courses, wellbeing, and nutrition advice offered by Humanoo personal wellbeing coach app
• Mental wellbeing support by our Employee Assistance Program and professional consultants to help you find health resources

Flexibility

• Flexible working hours
• Relocation assistance for internationals
• If you work from an office in your role, a choice of office equipment to be delivered to you, to support you working from home due to COVID-19 safety

Financial

• Access to the employee shares program
• 40% shopping discount on products shipped and sold by Zalando, and 30% discount on Zalando Lounge
• Discounts from a wide range of external partners

Family

• Employee parents' forums and employee resource group
• Supported transition into and out of parental leave, with a buddy and re-onboarding plan
• 3 fully-paid child sick days per year
• Free counselling, assistance, and referral service for all matters concerning yourself and your family via the Fürstenberg Institute

We celebrate diversity and are committed to building teams that represent a variety of backgrounds, perspectives and skills. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, merit and business need.
ABOUT ZALANDO
It's the perfect time to join Zalando on our journey, from being a pioneer in the world of e-commerce, to the starting point for fashion in Europe. We connect customers, brands, and partners across 23 markets.

Help us drive digital and sustainable solutions for fashion, logistics, advertising and research, bringing head-to-toe fashion to more than 46 million active customers through a team of diverse skill-sets, cultural backgrounds, and interests.

Our values: https://jobs.zalando.com/en/our-founding-mindset

do.More - our sustainability strategy: https://corporate.zalando.com/en/sustainability

Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/insidezalando

Please note that all applications must be completed using the online form - we do not accept applications via email.