Principal Applied Scientist

Zalando
Anywhere
Full timeFunction: Research & Scientific (R&D)Experience: 5+ yearsEducation: phdSkills: ["Technical leadership","Collaboration","Strategic thinking","Coaching","Communication"]

Lead the scientific vision for real-time bidding and allocation engines powering Zalando Marketing Services ad tech. Define optimization and auction mechanisms that balance advertiser ROI with user relevance at extreme scale, collaborating across product, engineering, and analytics. Drive an end-to-end roadmap across reinforcement learning, multi-objective optimization, value-based bidding, incrementality allocation, and large-scale Bayesian inference, while coaching teammates and advancing production-ready ML under ultra-low latency constraints.

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Zalando
Zalando
1 day ago

Principal Applied Scientist

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Job Summary

Lead the scientific vision for real-time bidding and allocation engines powering Zalando Marketing Services ad tech. Define optimization and auction mechanisms that balance advertiser ROI with user relevance at extreme scale, collaborating across product, engineering, and analytics. Drive an end-to-end roadmap across reinforcement learning, multi-objective optimization, value-based bidding, incrementality allocation, and large-scale Bayesian inference, while coaching teammates and advancing production-ready ML under ultra-low latency constraints.
Location: Anywhere
Employment Type: Full time
Job Function: Research & Scientific (R&D)
Seniority: Sr. Manager level

Key Responsibilities

  • •Lead R&D for real-time bidding and allocation algorithms, optimizing for long-term platform health, advertiser performance, and user relevance.
  • •Advance auction and mechanism design capabilities to support a fair, efficient, and transparent marketplace.
  • •Collaborate with product managers, engineers, and analysts to translate business constraints into mathematical objective functions.
  • •Drive the long-term scientific and execution roadmap for ad tech bidding optimization in partnership with engineers and ML scientists.
  • •Coach and support team members as a force multiplier for the scientific community.

Pay and Benefits

Perks:Paid LeaveEquityRelocationHealth Insurance

Key Requirements

  • •PhD in machine learning with a track record of publications and industry experience.
  • •Peer-reviewed research excellence in areas such as computational advertising, auction theory, mechanism design, or game theory (include in application).
  • •At least 5+ years optimizing complex systems with automated algorithms in ad tech, marketplaces, or related fields.
  • •Deep theoretical and technical expertise in optimization, control theory, or reinforcement learning applied to bidding and budget pacing.
  • •Strong Python proficiency and experience productionalizing ML models under ultra-low latency constraints with scalable data pipelines and large-scale distributed systems.
Experience:5+ yearsAd techMarketplacesComputational advertising
Education:PhD / Doctorate in Machine learning
Skills:Technical leadershipCollaborationStrategic thinkingCoachingCommunication
Tech Stack:Python

Company Brief

Zalando
Zalando operates a leading European online marketplace for fashion and lifestyle products, offering clothing, shoes and accessories from international brands and local labels, plus logistics and marketing services to partner brands and retailers.
Industry: Online Marketplaces
Company Size: Enterprise (1,001+ employees)
Revenue: USD 1B+
Growth: Public Company
Valuation: Public Company (Market Cap in USD)
Funding: IPO / Publicly Listed
Headquarters: Berlin, Germany
Founded: 2008
WebsiteLinkedIn