Please introduce yourself and your role at Zalando.
Hello. My name is Tino. I've been with Zalando since 2013, so that's nearly ten years now. I started in the so-called Tech logistics department. This is the part of Zalando, where we develop our own warehouse management system. The department was growing and this was an opportunity to join, exactly at the moment when we opened the first Zalando-operated warehouse. At the end of 2021, I took over the responsibility for engineering at B2B Logistics (Connected Network), a business unit that makes Zalando’s logistics solutions available for partners.
Can you tell me a bit more about what motivates you most about working at Zalando?
This is always a good question. I was part of the whole story - not from the very beginning but from quite an early stage of this company. So I was a part of it when one of our founders joined the daily tech standups, and the whole tech part of Zalando was able to fit into only a few floors. I was part of it when we stepped into a bunch of growth opportunities, and some of them were a success and got continued, whereas some of them were canceled. It was quite an interesting experience. You probably don't get an experience like that too often in life. Up until now the daily work, the daily requests and all these day-to-day challenges are still very exciting for me. So I'm not in a kind of maintenance mode and not just in an execution mode. This is something that highly motivates me. I definitely see a lot of opportunities, so I'm very convinced that we could work in the next 10 to 15 years without running out of a backlog. There are also a lot of opportunities on the table. I have made many friends in the company with whom I can discuss things. That motivates me to keep going.
What do you like about our culture?
What I like a lot is the very open feedback culture. That means that you are able to directly give feedback in both directions; you can give it to your own manager or even the manager of your manager. And there's really action on this. I really like this open feedback culture we have in place. It's also easy to give feedback to your own peers and to your directs by being sure that it's taken in. I believe it's very important that you can speak up and raise your voice. Another one is that everybody is focusing in the same direction. Everybody is trying to drive the same kind of business. So, there are no individuals with egos that try to only contribute for their own benefit. It's always treated as a team effort and as a company or a department effort. And also success is celebrated as a department. I think this is also different from other companies.
Overall, I think at Zalando we do have a very good culture. It's definitely the people from different backgrounds that makes it special. I learned things because I got the opportunity to talk to people and to work with people from countries I potentially would never have visited by myself. I like how professional the processes are. There is also room for improvement but in the end, when I compare this to my previous jobs but especially also to the public sector, I recognize that we are much more efficient in deciding and executing things than others are. I also like that we are not blindly following a kind of vision someone created 5 or 10 years ago, but we adjust our milestones, we adjust our strategy and this allows us to also react quite agilely on behaviors outside of our own influence. A good example is the pandemic, but also this terrible war at the moment. We are able to adapt to such situations that we cannot directly influence, in a way where we are still able to further drive our business in a healthy manner.
How did you develop your career? What are your ambitions to keep growing?
I had several mentors over the last 10 years at Zalando. Over the years I was able to create a broader network in the company and this helps a lot. If you are able to have a reliable repertoire of people, you always find someone who is an expert for your current problem.
Today, I am a mentor myself. I was a mentor for several other colleagues and I still am a mentor. I met with these colleagues regularly, discussed topics or just shared my own experiences of similar situations. This also helps me to grow. And sometimes it’s helpful to recognize that you are not alone in having these kinds of problems.
For my personal growth, I would expect to go further than driving the execution of current initiatives and planning for the next 12-24 months and focus even deeper on the long-term planning and driving the vision. The time scope is what I see as one of the main differences between the head and the director role. In a head role you’re responsible for planning and driving the scope of the next 1 to 3 years, in the director role I would expect to drive the vision for the next 3 to 5 or even 3 to 7 years.
So let's talk about Zalando B2B Logistics. What makes your team so special?
We’re a very young team, so most of the people came on board in the last 12 to 18 months. Nevertheless, the teams are highly motivated and even after this short time they drive complex initiatives autonomously. The teams are able to align - also cross departments. What I experienced is that I’m rarely needed for any kind of escalation. And all teams strongly deliver. Constantly there is something which is measurable, which is presentable. This is something I'm very proud of by the teams. And the teams always start with yes. Everybody in B2B Logistics has a high motivation to really make a change and a high motivation to support the overall business.
A big plus of our teams is the ability to deal with uncertainty. We do not have all the answers today and no detailed roadmap for the next 10 years. We know what our goals are, we just don’t know how to always reach them. It's not like in one of the South Park episodes, where you steal underpants as a first step and get rich in the 3rd step but don’t know anything about the step in the middle. At B2B Logistics we’re fine to make smaller steps and learn from these and analyze what has to be improved on the way.
In B2B Logistics we have a strong group of Engineering Managers. If you look into the single individual engineering managers, you recognize each of them has their own strengths that result in a strong peer group that completes each other. And this is the same for the Principal Engineers at the principal peer group.
Why should someone join?
This is easy to answer. For me, this is the best business unit I can imagine in one of the best companies in Europe - if not from the world.
If it is about Zalando as a whole, I think it's the culture and the way we work together to identify and seize opportunities and constantly evolve.
When it comes specifically to B2B Logistics, I really appreciate the opportunity to be an early bird of a new chapter in Zalando. We’re driving a new kind of business for our company and this growth opportunity is massive. We have a very broad domain. There are parts deep in the backend at the core entity level, there are partner-facing applications, there is big data processing, our science initiatives, compliance and legal aspects, partner onboarding and sales processes and our creative and innovative reporting solutions. We have something for everybody.
We work in a scope that allows us to work closely with several other departments. This allows us to build a broad network and gain insights into the challenges faced by other teams.
We’re owning a broad domain. This comes with a lot of opportunities. Be it in personal growth, be it in discovering new technologies, be it in challenging initiatives - it never gets boring. At B2B Logistics it's not about a small thing where you only have to focus on one single North Star. It's about a bunch of processes like inbound, returns, and shipping. It's about pure backend data collection and calculation for scientific models. It's about frontends and partner-facing solutions, it’s about reporting, invoicing, taxes, and payments.
You should be curious about stepping into several different kinds of technologies and environments. You should be motivated to learn new things. It’s not only about climbing the career ladder, but it's also about growing with a lot of opportunities.
Learn more about what B2B at Zalando is all about and find your fit.
Discover more about Zalando's engineering role by visiting our Engineering Blog.
