Principal AI Scientist (all genders)

Zalando GmbH; Berlin; Hybrid; EUR 150.000 - 210.000; Vollzeit

Benefits dieser Stelle

Employee shares program

40% off fashion and beauty products

2 paid volunteering days

Hybrid work model with 60% remote per‑

Work from abroad up to 30 days

27 days vacation

Relocation assistance

Family services

Health and wellbeing options

Mental health support

Zusammenfassung

Zalando GmbH is seeking a Principal AI Scientist to shape the Zalando Assistant with LLM‑driven agents and RAG pipelines. You will lead architecture, prompt engineering, and LLM integrations across the customer lifecycle to boost activation, engagement, retention, and conversion.

This hands‑on role impacts production systems used by millions. You will foster experimentation, evaluate improvements with offline and online metrics, and mentor teams while collaborating with product, engineering, and

Qualifikationen

• 10+ years of experience in engineering or applied science.
• Strong Python skills with production‑grade applications.
• Strong analytical and problem‑solving abilities.
• Experience optimizing AI systems for business KPIs.
• Plus: building LLM‑powered apps or AI agents; prompt engineering; LangChain/LlamaIndex/DSPy; API/RAG integrations; embedding/vector tech.

Aufgaben

• Design and build conversational AI agents.
• Develop and integrate RAG pipelines for contextual data.
• Tune and evaluate LLM prompts for engagement.
• Integrate LLMs with search, recommendations, and APIs.
• Define evaluation frameworks for quality and grounding.
• Run experiments to optimize gains in conversion and retention.
• Own architecture, development, and deployment of LLM‑powered workflows.
• Collaborate cross‑functionally with engineering, product, and data science teams.
• Mentor colleagues and share best practices in AI and agent development.

Kenntnisse

Python

Analytics

KPIs

Production‑grade

Tools

LangChain

LlamaIndex

PydanticAI

DSPy

External APIs

RAG systems

Vector databases

Jobbeschreibung

Zalando’s Zalando Assistant team is looking for a Principal AI Scientist to help us build the future of retail through conversational AI experiences powered by Large Language Models (LLMs) and intelligent agents. Your expertise will be key in designing and developing AI-driven systems that support fashion discovery, trend exploration, outfit recommendations, and conversational shopping experiences.

As a Principal AI Scientist, you’ll play a significant role in shaping the architecture and capabilities of the Zalando Assistant. You will work on AI agents, RAG pipelines, prompt engineering, and LLM integrations, ensuring high-quality, grounded, and engaging conversations. Your domain will span the full customer lifecycle, helping drive customer activation, engagement, retention, and conversion through intelligent conversational experiences.

This is a hands-on role with direct impact on customer-facing experiences. You will build and improve production AI agents used by millions of customers, working closely with product and engineering partners to deliver measurable business impact through improved product discovery, recommendation relevance, and purchase conversion.

You will be at the center of fostering a culture of experimentation and innovation, ensuring assistant improvements are rigorously evaluated using both offline and online metrics. Your work will directly influence business impact, improving engagement, retention, and long-term customer value through conversational AI.

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.

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

• Design and build conversational AI agents
• Develop and integrate RAG pipelines to enrich experiences with fresh, contextual data
• Design, tune, and evaluate LLM prompts to improve response quality and user engagement
• Integrate LLMs with search, recommendation, and external APIs
• Define and implement evaluation frameworks for conversation quality and grounding
• Run experiments and optimize assistant performance for business KPIs (conversion, engagement, retention)
• Own the architecture, development, and deployment of LLM‑powered agent workflows
• Collaborate cross‑functionally with engineering, product, and data science teams
• Mentor colleagues and share best practices in applied AI and agent development

WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR

10+ years of experience in the field of engineering or applied science.

Strong Python skills and experience building production‑grade applications

Strong analytical and problem‑solving skills

Experience optimizing AI systems for business KPIs

Any of the following is a strong plus:

• Experience building LLM‑powered applications or AI agents
• Experience with prompt engineering, tuning, and evaluation
• Experience with agent frameworks such as LangChain, LlamaIndex, PydanticAI, DSPy, or similar
• Experience integrating LLMs with external APIs, tools, and/or RAG systems
• Experience evaluating conversation quality and defining LLM metrics is a plus
• Experience with vector databases, embeddings, or retrieval systems

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.

• 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
• Hybrid working model with 60% (or more) remote per week, actual practice is up to each team to best support their collaboration
• Work from abroad for up to 30 working days a year
• 27 days of vacation a year to start
• Relocation assistance available (subject to prior agreement)
• Family services, including counseling and support
• Health and wellbeing options (including Gympass)
• Mental health support and coaching available

Software Engineering

Our Software Engineering teams deploy software extensively, managing a broad set of applications and conducting thousands of deployments per week. The Software Engineering team enables Zalando as Europe’s number one multi‑brand, digital platform for fashion, beauty, and lifestyle for our partners and customers. As a Zalando Software Engineer, you’ll be part of a community of thousands of colleagues across Europe.

It’s the perfect time to join Zalando on our journey to build the leading pan‑European ecosystem for fashion and lifestyle e‑commerce. Help us offer an inspiring and quality multi‑brand shopping experience for fashion and lifestyle products to about 50 million active customers in 25 markets. Or be part of our logistic infrastructure, software or service capabilities to help brands and retailers run and scale their entire e‑commerce business, on or off Zalando. Join our Zalando ecosystem, to enable positive change for the fashion and lifestyle industry.