SENIOR APPLIED SCIENTIST (Price Optimization) – Pricing, Traffic & Trading Tech (ALL GENDERS)
As a Senior Applied Scientist in the Pricing Platform department, you will own the optimization algorithms at the decision-making core of our algorithmic pricing solution – the layer that turns predictions into the discounts shown across millions of articles on the Zalando platform. It is a genuine, large-scale operations research challenge with direct commercial impact, shaping both profitability and stock risk across our inventory. You will work at the intersection of operations research, causal inference, and machine learning, collaborating with fellow scientists, engineers and product managers, applying methods from cutting-edge research, and contributing to Zalando's vibrant Applied Science community with extensive opportunities for professional growth.
WHERE YOUR EXPERTISE IS NEEDED
- Design, build and scale the optimization engine itself – from fast local algorithms to large-scale mixed-integer models – shaping how we solve these problems in production.
- Translate commercial objectives into well-posed optimization problems, balancing long-term profitability against short-term commercial targets under real-world business and inventory constraints.
- Own the measurement of our decisions, designing and analyzing experiments that compare pricing strategies fairly and give us a causal read on their real impact.
- Work closely with the partner teams who build the predictive models upstream of pricing, and with Software Engineers and Product Managers – and, when needed, contribute directly to the models you depend on.
WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR
- Master's Degree or PhD in Operations Research, Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, Statistics or another similar quantitative field
- Strong mathematical background with deep expertise in optimization – the ability to formulate, extend and debug linear and mixed-integer programs, and to reason about relaxations, infeasibility, solver algorithms and their tuning
- Strong software and systems skills: solid Python and a commitment to reproducible, production-grade code, comfort with optimization solvers (e.g. HiGHS, OR-Tools, Gurobi) and large-scale data processing (e.g. Polars, Spark, Databricks); experience with native or compiled code such as Rust is a plus
- Working knowledge of statistics and machine learning – enough to be a critical consumer of the models upstream of pricing
- Econometric and causal-inference literacy – comfort with experiment design and separating the true effect of a decision from noise and confounders
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, municipality services, 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
- Relocation assistance for internationals, PME family service and parent & child rooms* (*available in select locations)
We celebrate diversity and are committed to building teams that represent a variety of backgrounds, perspectives and skills. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, merit and business need.
