Senior Applied Scientist - Search (all genders)

Zalando Group; Berlin; Híbrido; EUR 90.000 - 150.000; Jornada completa

Ventajas ofrecidas por este puesto de trabajo

27 days holiday

Fashion and beauty discounts

Family support

Company pension

Employee shares programme

Health and wellbeing options

Mental health support

Training platform

Volunteering days

Relocation assistance

Descripción de la vacante

Zalando is seeking a Senior Applied Scientist in Berlin to lead the development and deployment of advanced ML models and agentic workflows for its core search and discovery platform. You will collaborate with engineers, product managers, and designers to tackle large-scale ranking and retrieval challenges.

You will mentor mid-level and junior scientists, publish in top conferences, and drive innovations in information retrieval, NLP, and agentic AI across Zalando's data-rich, customer-centric

Formación

• Master's or PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Information Retrieval, Mathematics, or related quantitative field.
• Strong publication track record in top-tier venues (SIGIR, KDD, ACL, NeurIPS) preferred.
• Deep expertise in IR, search ranking, NLP, and agentic AI systems.

Responsabilidades

• Research, design, and deploy ML models for search relevance, ranking, and personalization.
• Collaborate with product, engineering, and design to translate problems into scientific solutions.
• Mentor junior scientists and drive excellence in agentic AI and large-scale systems.

Conocimientos

Information Retrieval

Machine Learning

NLP

Search Ranking

Mentoring

Educación

Master's degree in CS/ML/IR

PhD in CS/IR or related

Herramientas

Python

TensorFlow

PyTorch

Spark

Descripción del empleo

The Search team at Zalando is at the heart of our customer experience. We are responsible for the core discovery journey of millions of customers, ensuring they find the fashion and lifestyle products they love out of a catalog of millions of items. By leveraging state-of-the-art information retrieval, natural language processing, machine learning, and emerging agentic AI, we continuously improve query understanding, product ranking, and personalized search experiences.

As a Senior Applied Scientist on the Search team, you will be a technical leader in developing and deploying advanced, machine learning models and agentic workflows that directly impact our search engine's relevance and performance. Together with your peers—engineers, product managers, and other scientists—you will tackle complex challenges at scale, drive scientific excellence, and set the standard for how we solve complex ranking and retrieval problems.

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

• You’ll research, design, and deploy state-of-the-art machine learning models for search relevance, learning-to-rank (LTR), query understanding, and personalization, leveraging both traditional ML and autonomous, agentic LLM workflows.
• You’ll work with various stakeholders (Product, Engineering, Design) to understand the business context, translate customer problems into scientific formulations, and contribute to developing scalable solutions.
• You’ll support the end-to-end implementation of your solutions, from offline model training on massive datasets to online deployment, and measure success through rigorous A/B testing and customer feedback.
• You’ll drive scientific and engineering excellence within the team, mentoring mid-level and junior scientists and championing novel approaches using agentic AI systems.
• You hold a Master’s or PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Information Retrieval, Mathematics, or a related quantitative field, backed by solid, related industry experience in applied machine learning.
• A strong track record of publications in top-tier conferences (e.g., SIGIR, KDD, ACL, NeurIPS) is highly preferred.
• You have deep expertise in Information Retrieval, Search Ranking, NLP, and hands-on experience designing and building agentic AI systems (e.g., autonomous agents, LLM-based reasoning frameworks).
• You are comfortable working with large-scale data systems and modern search engines.
• You consistently demonstrate a customer-centric approach, possess a strong product mindset, and proactively flag continuous improvement initiatives within your area.
• You take an active interest in market trends and the latest advancements in AI and Search technologies.

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
• 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)

INCLUSIVE BY DESIGN

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!

At Zalando, our vision is to be the leading European technology platform for fashion and lifestyle – one that thrives on diversity and is truly inclusive by design. We believe that diverse teams fuel innovation and creativity, and we actively seek out talent from all backgrounds.

We actively seek to reduce bias in our hiring and employment processes, focusing on your qualifications, skills, and contributions. To support this, we kindly ask that you refrain from including personal details such as your photo, age, or marital status in your CV, ensuring a fair and equitable evaluation based solely on your abilities and potential.

We are committed to providing an exceptional and accessible candidate experience for everyone. If you require any accommodations to support you throughout the hiring process, please let us know – we are here to assist you.

About Zalando

Founded in Berlin in 2008, Zalando is the leading European technology platform for fashion and lifestyle. Connecting 62 million active customers with more than 7,000 brands across 29 markets, our operations are built on a unique AI-powered data and infrastructure platform. For our customers, our multi-app approach - comprising Zalando, ABOUT YOU, and Lounge by Zalando - delivers an inspiring, highly personalized shopping experience, serving different customers with different needs. For our partners, we are building the operating system for e-commerce. Through ZEOS, Tradebyte, and SCAYLE, we open our logistics, software, and service capabilities to brands and retailers, enabling them to seamlessly scale their businesses across borders.