Director of Data Science Berlin

Vestiaire Collective is the leading global online marketplace for desirable pre-loved fashion. Our mission is to transform the fashion industry for a more sustainable future by empowering our community to promote the circular fashion movement. Vestiaire was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in Paris with offices in London, Berlin, New York, Singapore, Ho Chi Minh and Hong Kong and warehouses in Tourcoing (France), Crawley (UK), Hong Kong and New York.

We currently have a diverse global team of 700 employees representing more than 50 nationalities. Our values are Activism, Transparency, Dedication and Greatness and Collective. We are proud to be a BCorp.

We're seeking an experienced leader to enhance our platform's search and browse experiences using AI technologies. This role will focus on leveraging artificial intelligence to improve discovery beyond traditional keyword search, including image recognition and conversational commerce capabilities.

**About the role \uD83D\uDDA5️**:

- ** Strategic Vision & Implementation**:

- Define and execute the technical strategy for Discovery across search, recommendations, and AI-driven experiences
- Lead multiple engineering teams (backend, frontend, ML/AI, data) within the Discovery organization
- Drive architectural decisions for scalable, high-performance discovery systems
- Establish engineering excellence standards, processes, and best practices
- Develop and execute a comprehensive vision for evolving the discovery experience on our C2C platform
- Lead AI initiatives to enhance search and browse functionalities beyond keyword-based search
- Address unique data challenges of customer-generated content in a C2C marketplace
- Create data acquisition flywheels by incentivizing customer engagement
- **
Team Leadership & Growth**:

- Lead and grow the Discovery team in a rapidly scaling environment
- Establish strong relationships with direct reports and commercial stakeholders
- Foster AI fluency and innovation across the organization
- Mentor team members and lead by example through excellent communication
- Partner closely with Product, Data Science, and Commercial teams
- Collaborate with other VPs and C-level executives on company-wide initiatives
- Represent engineering perspective in strategic business decisions
- Drive alignment between engineering execution and business objectives
- **
Technical Innovation**:

- Implement advanced AI solutions including image recognition and conversational commerce
- Drive adoption of modern engineering practices (DevOps, CI/CD, testing, monitoring)
- Ensure system reliability, scalability, and performance at global scale
- Balance technical debt management with feature delivery
- Address data sparseness challenges specific to C2C platforms
- Drive innovation in search and discovery technologies
- Collaborate with engineering teams to deliver scalable solutions

**Who you are**:

- ** Leadership Experience**:

- 8+ years of engineering leadership experience, including 3+ years at VP/Director level
- Proven track record building and scaling engineering organizations (20+ engineers)
- Experience managing multiple teams and engineering managers
- Demonstrated success in high-growth, fast-paced environments
- Proven track record implementing AI-driven search and discovery solutions or Strong AI/ML background with demonstrated ability to innovate and adapt
- **
Technical Skills**:

- Deep expertise in AI/ML, particularly in search, recommendation systems, and computer vision
- Experience with image recognition technologies
- Understanding of conversational commerce and natural language processing
- Experience with modern cloud infrastructure and microservices architecture
- Platform or marketplace experience strongly preferred
- **
Leadership & Communication**:

- Exceptional communication skills - ability to explain complex technical concepts to diverse stakeholders
- Proven experience building and scaling technical teams
- Strong stakeholder management and cross-functional collaboration skills
- Experience in fast-paced, high-growth environments
- **
Industry Background**:

- E-commerce or marketplace platform experience preferred
- Understanding of C2C business models and associated data challenges
- Experience with customer-generated content and data quality challenges
- Proven ability to balance technical excellence with business priorities
- Experience with global, multi-market product development

**What we offer**\uD83C\uDF81

A meaningful job with an impact on the way people consume fashion and promote sustainability

The opportunity to do career-defining work in a fast-growing French-born scale up

The possibility to work as part of a globally diverse team with more than 50 nationalities

Two days to help Project - reinforcing your activist journey and volunteer for an association

Significant investment in your learning and growth

Competitive compensation and benefits package (i.e 28 days of paid time off)

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