Head of Engineering (All genders)

Zalando; Suomi; On-site; CAD 241,000 - 370,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Relocation support

40% Zalando shopping discount

International team and mentoring

Job summary

Zalando is seeking a Head of Engineering for Partner Platform Tech (PPT), based in Helsinki, to lead cross‑functional engineering groups and drive AI‑powered capabilities across the platform. You will hire, mentor and align roadmaps with strategic goals while partnering with tech consulting to deliver scalable, cloud‑native systems for Zalando and its partners.

You will champion AI‑driven engineering, scalable architectures, and best practices, while maintaining a pragmatic approach to delivery,

Qualifications

• 7+ years as a people leader in international, cross‑functional setting.
• Strong technical background with hands‑on software engineering experience.
• Experience with AWS cloud infrastructure.
• Experience leading AI/ML powered products and platforms.
• Knowledge of fashion e‑commerce systems and partner integrations.
• Proven ability to influence decisions across levels and geographies.
• Experience driving engineering culture and KPIs.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow multiple teams, coaching leads and engineers across sites.
• Collaborate with partners, stakeholders, and leaders to deliver an outstanding product.
• Drive adoption of AI‑native engineering and responsible ML practices.
• Shape engineering culture, foster learning, and enable high performance across the org.

Skills

Leadership

People management

AI/ML leadership

AWS

Cloud-native

APIs

Kubernetes

Java/Scala/Kotlin/TypeScript/Python

Cross-functional collaboration

Tools

AWS Cloud

APIs

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Job description

THE ROLE & THE TEAM

As the Head of Engineering for Partner Platform Tech (PPT), you will lead a group of cross-functional engineers, hire and develop talent and collaborate with tech consulting to define roadmaps. You also provide technical leadership and coaching for engineers across the landscape while primarily focusing on the engineering team in Helsinki.

THE ROLE & THE TEAM

As the Head of Engineering for Partner Platform Tech (PPT), you will lead a group of cross-functional engineers, hire and develop talent and collaborate with tech consulting to define roadmaps. You also provide technical leadership and coaching for engineers across the landscape while primarily focusing on the engineering team in Helsinki. Zalando's PPT is a composable architecture of systems with several solutions providing software services that enable Zalando partners to manage their transactions with Zalando. It serves as the foundation for partners to do business successfully within the Zalando marketplace. As Head of Engineering, you will work in this dynamic environment with a talented and diverse workforce, delivering against roadmaps, aligned with our future-looking Zalando and Partner Tech target strategies. As AI and Machine Learning become fundamental building blocks of modern commerce platforms, they will be an essential part of the future PPT offering. You will help shape how AI-powered capabilities, intelligent automation, and data-driven services are embedded into our products, architecture, and engineering practices, creating differentiated value for our partners and customers. This position is to be based in Helsinki.

INCLUSIVE BY DESIGN

At Zalando, our vision is to be inclusive by design. And this vision starts with our hiring - we do not discriminate on the basis of gender identity, sexual orientation, personal expression, ethnicity, religious belief, or disability status. You are welcome to leave out your picture, age, or marital status from your application. We only assess candidates on their qualifications and merit.

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

do.BETTER - our diversity & inclusion strategy: https://corporate.zalando.com/en/our-impact/dobetter-our-diversity-and-inclusion-strategy

Our employee resource groups: https://corporate.zalando.com/en/our-impact/our-employee-resource-groups

What we’d love you to do (and love doing)

• Lead, manage, inspire and grow multiple teams. As a leader of leads and principal engineers, it will be your responsibility to coach your directs to become the best they can be. You will provide direction, guidance and amazing working conditions for cross‑functional delivery that involve multiple engineering teams, serving a broad range of use cases. You will be accountable for the delivery of the long‑term architectural roadmap and the reliable operation of the department’s production software systems.
• Engage with stakeholders and other leaders across the company and sites to deliver an outstanding product to satisfy the needs of our internal and external customers and stakeholders, especially our Brand and Retailer partners and system integrators.
• Ensure that development of the systems is simplified and scales to the future needs and volumes of Zalando. Stay at the forefront of technology, including cloud‑native platforms, AI, Machine Learning, developer tooling, and modern software engineering practices. Leverage existing platform capabilities, APIs, software services, and emerging technologies to build scalable, resilient, and cost‑efficient systems capable of supporting Zalando’s continued growth and innovation.
• Drive the adoption of AI‑native engineering practices and intelligent platform capabilities. Champion the responsible use of Machine Learning, Generative AI, and agentic systems where they create measurable value for partners, developers, and the business. Lead the evolution of our engineering organisation to leverage AI both as a product capability and as an accelerator for software delivery, operational excellence, and developer productivity.
• Help shape Zalando’s engineering culture by attracting, developing, and inspiring exceptional engineering talent while fostering engineering practices that create remarkable impact for our customers and partners at scale. Encourage a culture of continuous learning, innovation, and AI‑assisted engineering excellence.

We’d love to meet you if…

• You are an empathetic and egoless but passionate leader who excels at developing, coaching, and mentoring engineering leaders and engineers.
• You have 7+ years of professional experience as a people lead in an international, cross‑functional environment, as well as a proven track record building and scaling engineering teams within a mid or large scale organisation (over 30+ engineers) co‑operating effectively over geographical sites.
• You have a strong understanding of modern technology landscapes, supported by a solid technical background and multiple years of hands‑on software engineering experience with technologies such as Scala, Kotlin, Java, TypeScript, or Python. You are familiar with distributed systems, cloud‑native architectures, APIs, and modern software engineering practices.
• You have experience working with systems in AWS cloud infrastructure.
• Experience leading teams building AI‑and ML‑powered products and platforms is a significant advantage. Practical experience with agentic programming, Large Language Models (LLMs), production Machine Learning models, AI‑enabled software architectures, and bringing intelligent systems into production is considered a strong bonus.
• You have an extraordinary knowledge of fashion e‑commerce systems. integration of those with the partners and serving their business transactions, e.g., for price, stock, order and logistics management.
• Your drive and positive energy is contagious and you have a track record of helping and motivating teams to do their best and most effective work of their careers.
• You possess an understanding of software delivery KPIs (release velocity, lead time, etc.) and how to influence them to create a high performing technology organisation with high predictability.
• You have the ability to share and nurture technical ideas and direction across the organisation and a proven ability to influence decision making at all levels and in a variety of contexts.
• You have experience working with different functions, experts, and levels of leadership.

If you think you have what it takes, we encourage you to apply even if you don't meet every single requirement. You may just be the right candidate for this or other roles.

We look forward to receiving your application by TBD, EOD.

Our offer

Zalando provides a range of benefits, here’s an overview of what you can expect.

• Culture of trust, empowerment and constructive feedback, open source commitment, meetups, game nights, 70+ internal technical and fun guilds, knowledge sharing through tech talks, internal tech academy and blogs, product demos, parties & events
• Competitive salary, employee share shop, 40% Zalando shopping discount, discounts from external partners, centrally located offices, public transport discounts, municipality services, flexible working times, additional holidays and volunteering time off, free beverages and fruits, diverse sports and health offerings
• Extensive onboarding, mentoring and personal development opportunities and an international team of experts
• Relocation assistance for internationals

Learn all about Zalando and our values here: https://jobs.zalando.com/en/?gh_src=22377bdd1us. For more information about our office and teams in Helsinki, please visit: https://www.zalandohelsinki.com/