Principal Web/Frontend Engineer

ABOUT THE ROLE

The Zalando eCommerce Platform Sciences team assists customers in their fashion discovery journey and helps them find what they are looking for across Zalando. In the echo department we drive the vision of having Zalando be the place for customers to discover quality content, find personalised inspiration and make a truly deeper connection. We are transforming the content discovery systems, utilising innovative approaches and building inspirational experiences for our customers. 

As a Principal Engineer you will work with exceptional engineers, science, analysts, and product leaders to spearhead the strategy, design, and implementation of ML & AI backed experiences that are scalable, repeatable, and secure. We are looking for a strong technical leader to help build  experiences that allow customers to explore and discover fashion in a unique style. You will partner with your Product counterparts to define and deliver new ways to discover fashion and lifestyle across all Zalando experiences.

Teams at our Berlin Tech Hub work on many of the cornerstones of our Fashion Store, including personalization and recommendation components. Through full stack engineering and research, we turn visionary ideas into new emerging businesses with real potential. By tackling diverse challenges for the fashion industry, we drive the personal digital experience and underlying knowledge models to create the most inspirational fashion experience for our customers.

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:
Our employee resource groups:

WHERE YOUR EXPERTISE IS NEEDED

• Guide the engineering department that helps customers discover quality content, find personalised inspiration and have deeper engagement with Zalando.

• Scale up the teams building innovative solutions leveraging latest in machine learning technologies including generative AI and large language models. 

• Support and lead teams in achieving a high level of engineering quality, throughput, performance and reliability.

• Drive operational excellence as part of your team culture. 

• Mentor seniors to principal engineers and actively collaborate with other teams. Share knowledge and expertise within our talented engineering, product, data and science community.

• Developing and implementing strategies and approaches to solving complex problems and challenges to help achieve business goals and objectives.

• Working closely with applied science and engineering leaders, product managers and other business stakeholders to bring our state-of-the-art solutions to the customers and to discover and identify new opportunities.

WE'D LOVE TO MEET YOU IF

• Growth mindset, strive for excellence, fast and passionate learner, open-minded, excel on giving and receiving feedback, thrive in front of changes and challenges. 

• Excellent software development engineering skills to design and implement effective solutions for data and ML strategies in large-scale production environments. You are great at and happy to hands-on delivering projects as well as leading development.  

• Experience leading the architecture and design (design patterns, reliability and scaling) and building of new and current data systems, and developing tools for self-serve access. 

• You have hands-on experience with React Native, JavaScript/TypeScript, React Hooks and state management libraries like Redux, MobX, Context API. A familiarity with native modules and bridging for iOS and android is a plus.

• Experience with GraphQL, JSON, networking libraries, Webviews and software design patterns and paradigms. Understanding and experience with MVC, MVVM, Flux and other architectural patterns.

• You write clean, maintainable code with tests,  have a deep understanding of observability and take ownership of your work.

• You make the applications resilient and reliable through open tracing, monitoring, and load testing.

• Experience working with machine learning backed customer experiences is a plus.

• Good communication skills and experience leading organization-wide collaborations. Ability and eagerness to understand the business context where the team operates and the customer problems being solved.

• Experience coaching and mentoring senior engineers, and working closely with applied scientists, engineers, and product managers. 

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 products sold and shipped by Zalando

• 2 paid volunteering days a year

• Hybrid working model with 60% remote per week

• Work from abroad for up to 30 working days a year

• 27 days of vacation a year 

• Relocation assistance available (subject to prior agreement)

• Family services, including counselling and support

• Health and wellbeing options 

• Mental health support and coaching available

PERKS AT WORK

• 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, great IT equipment, 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