Responsibilities
- Shape the architecture and technical direction of scalable core growth, data, and AI platforms.
- Guide the evolution of event-driven microservices and high-throughput pipelines for reliability and sustainable scale.
- Lead cross-team engineering initiatives and establish shared architectural practices across Lounge.
- Help transition GenAI initiatives from prototypes to robust production platforms, including secure AI-assisted workflows and evaluation tooling.
- Mentor and coach senior engineers through architecture reviews, pair programming, and architectural guidance.
- Author architecture decision records, contribute to engineering guilds, and represent Lounge in Zalando’s Principal Engineering community.
- Partner with Project Management on complex product and business initiatives across Lounge.
Requirements
- Extensive experience designing, building, and operating distributed, highly available backend systems.
- Strong architectural foundations and the ability to work with Kotlin and the JVM ecosystem.
- Experience with cloud-native environments such as AWS and Kubernetes.
- Solid understanding of data infrastructure, streaming pipelines such as Kafka, and operational best practices.
- Experience bringing machine-learning or GenAI solutions into production, including observability, evaluation, and reliable scaling.
- Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional teams and technical strategy without formal authority.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills for explaining complex technical topics to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Benefits
- Employee shares program.
- 40% discount on fashion and beauty products sold and shipped by Zalando, 30% discount on Zalando Lounge, and external partner discounts.
- Two paid volunteering days per year.
- Hybrid working model with up to 60% remote work per week.
- Work from abroad for up to 30 working days per year.
- 27 days of vacation per year initially.
- Relocation assistance subject to prior agreement.
- Family services, counseling, and support.
- Health and wellbeing options including Gympass.
- Mental health support and coaching.
- Training platform and biannual peer-to-peer reviews.
Tech Stack
Categories
About Zalando
Welcome to Zalando. Here’s some key info about us: Our position and vision: - We’re Europe’s leading online platform for fashion and lifestyle. - Founded in Berlin in 2008, we bring head-to-toe fashion to more than 50 million active customers in 25 markets; offering clothes, footwear, accessories, and beauty. - We're building the ecosystem for fashion and lifestyle ecommerce. Our offering: - Our assortment of international brands ranges from world-famous names to local labels - Our platform is a one-stop fashion destination for inspiration, innovation, and interaction - As Europe’s most fashionable tech company, we work hard to find digital solutions for every aspect of the fashion journey: for our customers, partners, and friends of our brand. - Our logistics network with 12 centrally located fulfillment centers allows us to efficiently serve our customers throughout Europe, supported by warehouses in Italy, France, Poland, and Sweden with a focus on local customer needs. Our beliefs: - Our ambition is to combine our passion for self-expression through fashion with our unwavering commitments to sustainability and D&I - We promote an inclusive corporate culture that welcomes different perspectives and brings together people from diverse backgrounds. We want to ensure a non-discriminatory and supportive working environment for each of our employees to thrive. It’s a journey that all teams are on together, centered around the values we uphold. - We believe that our integration of fashion, operations, and online technology gives us the capability to deliver a compelling value proposition to both our customers and fashion brand partners.