Job Description

As a (Senior) Applied Scientist, you will be part of an expert team of researchers and engineers responsible for developing and operating algorithmic decision components that optimise order fulfilment in all of Zalando’s warehouses. Your focus will be on creating advanced batching algorithms that determine the most efficient way to group orders for fulfilment, thereby minimising the total walking distance required for picking items.

In this role, you will face three significant challenges: conducting cutting-edge research to enhance algorithmic performance, gaining a deep understanding of warehouse operations to identify and address optimization opportunities, and systematically analysing data to ensure that algorithms perform in production systems as anticipated from experimental results.

What you'll do

• Contribute to modeling, solving, implementing, and evaluating our research-driven software framework to cater for the increasing scale and load. Constantly question the model and the algorithms we use and seek for a constant improvement.

• Deliver end-to-end solutions and set the standard for the entire development cycle, including requirement engineering based on deep domain & business understanding, prototyping, implementing production software, as well as testing and operating the highly available production system.
• Collaborate closely with our software engineers to mutually influence and understand system constraints and opportunities, and take part in shaping the future of our system.
• Think abstractly and discover correlations between problems, methodologies, and solutions.
• Promote and support an inclusive culture and diverse team environment, fostering a positive and productive work environment for all team members.

What we expect from you

• You have a strong academic background in mathematics or computer science and are interested in combinatorial optimization. You know the basic concepts of discrete optimization such as min-cost flows, linear- and integer programming, the travelling salesperson problem, or the bin packing problem. And you are able to detect these concepts even if they are hidden in complex real-world problems.
• You’re excited about working in a setup that requires a deep domain understanding, e.g. how our logistics order processing works.
• You have hands-on experience in microservice architecture and patterns, REST, Kubernetes, architecture documentation, data and API specifications (e.g. OpenAPI), quality assurance and testing methods.
• You have experience writing software on the JVM, and are familiar with Scala or you are open to learning and working with Scala in the future.
• You’re a team player who thrives in an agile and cross-functional environment, and is passionate about fostering a positive and productive work environment.

What we offer

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
• 25 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 available for internationals
• Home office equipment available for hybrid working, to support you working from home
• Hybrid working model with 60% remote per week
• Opportunity to work from abroad for 30 (working) days per calendar year

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
• SBB Half Fare Travelcard
• Family
• 4 weeks paid paternity leave and 17 weeks paid maternity leave
• 3 fully-paid child sick days per year