Head of Applied Science

THE ROLE & THE TEAM Are you an Applied Science Leader who turns advances in machine learning and causal inference into measurable customer and business value? Lounge by Zalando is our off-price shopping club, serving millions of members across 20+ European markets. We are looking for a Head of Applied Science to set the scientific direction for Growth & Lifecycle, advancing how we acquire, activate, engage, and retain customers.

Reporting to the Director in Lounge Tech, you will lead and develop applied science talent and own the research and machine-learning agenda for this domain. Your remit spans customer lifetime value modelling, marketing effectiveness and incrementality, personalisation, and automated customer engagement. You will translate business challenges into well-defined scientific problems, make choices about where research can create a differentiated advantage, and take promising approaches from hypothesis to production impact.

This is a scientific leadership role, not a product management role. You will be accountable for scientific quality, the development of your science organisation, and the measurable impact of its models and decision systems. You will partner closely with Product, Engineering, Analytics, Design, and Marketing: shaping priorities together while owning scientific methods, model evaluation, and scientific readiness for deployment.

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: https://corporate.zalando.com/en/our-impact/dobetter-our-diversity-and-inclusion-strategy

Our employee resource groups: https://corporate.zalando.com/en/our-impact/our-employee-resource-groups

WHAT WE'D LOVE YOU TO DO (AND LOVE DOING)

• Set the Applied Science Agenda: Define and drive a coherent research and ML strategy for Growth & Lifecycle. Build a portfolio that balances longer-term scientific advances with near-term customer and commercial impact, prioritising problems where modelling, experimentation, or optimisation can outperform simpler approaches.
• Build and Develop Scientific Talent: Hire, coach, and develop applied scientists and scientific leaders. Set clear expectations for scientific craft and career progression, provide substantive technical mentorship, and build a culture of rigorous peer review, reproducible research, and shared learning.
• Provide Deep Scientific Leadership: Guide problem formulation, method selection, and model design across lifetime value prediction, causal inference, uplift modelling, personalisation, and decision optimisation. Challenge assumptions, review experimental designs and results, and help teams resolve difficult scientific trade-offs.
• Take Research into Production: Own the scientific lifecycle from hypothesis and baselines through offline evaluation, online experimentation, and ongoing model improvement. Partner with Engineering on reliable deployment, monitoring, and retraining, with clear standards for model quality, latency, cost, and maintainability.
• Prove Incremental Business Impact: Establish how scientific advances translate into better acquisition efficiency, activation, retention, and customer lifetime value. Use controlled experiments and causal methods to distinguish genuine incremental value from correlation, and make scale, iterate, or stop decisions based on evidence.
• Advance Responsible AI and Automation: Identify where AI/ML, including agentic approaches, can improve marketing and lifecycle decisions. Evaluate new methods against robust baselines and establish safeguards for privacy, bias, customer experience, and human oversight before scaling.
• Shape Direction with Cross-functional Leaders: Partner with Product, Engineering, Analytics, and Marketing to turn scientific opportunities into shared priorities. Explain uncertainty, evidence, and investment trade-offs clearly to senior leaders, and connect your team's work with relevant scientific expertise across Zalando.

WE'D LOVE TO MEET YOU IF

• Applied Science Leadership: You have a strong track record of leading applied science or machine-learning teams, hiring and developing scientific talent, and delivering impact through others. You can set a scientific vision while remaining close enough to the work to challenge methods and coach senior scientists.
• Scientific Depth: You bring deep expertise in machine learning, statistics, and experimentation, with strong experience in one or more of causal inference, marketing science, personalisation, or optimisation. You can assess research critically and explain when a sophisticated model is justified and when a simpler solution is better.
• Research-to-Production

Experience

• You have led the development and deployment of models or algorithmic decision systems in a commercial environment. You understand the full lifecycle, including data quality, reproducibility, offline-to-online evaluation, model drift, and the operational trade-offs of running ML at scale.

• Evidence of Incremental Impact: You can show how scientific work changed real customer or business outcomes, not only offline model metrics. You are comfortable designing experiments, reasoning about confounding and uncertainty, and making investment decisions when evidence is incomplete.

• Growth and Lifecycle Understanding: You can translate acquisition, activation, retention, and customer lifetime value challenges into scientific problems. Experience in consumer marketplaces, e-commerce, subscriptions, or another high-volume consumer setting is valuable; familiarity with CRM and marketing platforms is useful but is not a substitute for scientific depth.

• Strategic Communication and Collaboration: You communicate complex scientific ideas clearly in English, influence senior stakeholders, and build effective partnerships across disciplines. You combine scientific ambition with commercial judgement and a strong focus on customer value.

• Research Foundations: You hold a PhD or Master's degree in a relevant quantitative discipline, or bring equivalent applied research experience. A record of impactful research, publications, patents, or open-source contributions is welcome; demonstrated scientific judgement and production impact matter more than credentials alone.

• Off-price or fashion domain knowledge is a bonus. Your ability to lead scientists and turn rigorous research into useful, reliable decision systems is what matters most.

• 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 and beauty products sold and shipped by Zalando, 30% off Zalando Lounge, discounts from external partners

• 2 paid volunteering days a year

• 27 days of vacation a year to start

• Relocation assistance available (subject to prior agreement)

• Family services, including counseling and support

• Health and wellbeing options (including Gympass)

• Mental health support and coaching available

• Drive your development through our training platform and biannual peer-to-peer review

• Learn all about Zalando and our values here: https://jobs.zalando.com/en/?gh_src=22377bdd1us

• About Zalando

• Founded in Berlin in 2008, Zalando is the leading European technology platform for fashion and lifestyle. Connecting 62 million active customers with more than 7,000 brands across 29 markets, our operations are built on a unique AI-powered data and infrastructure platform. For our customers, our multi-app approach - comprising Zalando, ABOUT YOU, and Lounge by Zalando - delivers an inspiring, highly personalized shopping experience, serving different customers with different needs. For our partners, we are building the operating system for e-commerce. Through ZEOS, Tradebyte, and SCAYLE, we open our logistics, software, and service capabilitie