Principal Applied Scientist

The Size and Fit team is tackling one of the most persistent challenges in the fashion industry: helping online customers confidently find and decide on the right size and fit. By doing so, we directly improve customer satisfaction, reduce returns, and drive sustainable, profitable growth. As an interdisciplinary team of applied scientists, software engineers, product managers, and design experts, we work holistically to deliver high-impact solutions with a focus on immediate, scalable results. While developing and maintaining proven, highly-adopted solutions such as ML-based size recommendations, we push the boundaries of what's possible in online fashion by rapidly iterating our approaches with cutting-edge AI, including diffusion models, image and video generation, and 2D and 3D try-on experiences, to shape the future of Size & Fit.

As a Principal Applied Scientist (economics / experimentations) in the Size and Fit organization, you will design and implement state-of-the-art methods capable of accurately measuring the business and customer impact of the Size & Fit products in fashion. You will apply economic theories and principles to real-world business problems and have an amazing opportunity to work closely with exceptional scientists who are creating bold AI driven customer-facing products.. In addition to deep scientific expertise, a strong track record in research and publications, candidates for this role must possess exceptional collaboration and communication skills. You must be a reliable partner, adept at supporting complex AI-driven products that create high customer and business impact. Your ability to effectively interface with cross-functional teams and contribute to solving complex business impact measurement challenges in AI applications will be crucial in driving success.

If you think you have what it takes, we encourage you to apply even if you don't meet every single requirement. You may just be the right candidate for this or other roles
At Zalando, our vision is to be the leading pan-European ecosystem for fashion and lifestyle e-commerce – one that thrives on diversity and is truly inclusive by design. We believe that diverse teams fuel innovation and creativity, and we actively seek out talent from all backgrounds.
We actively seek to reduce bias in our hiring and employment processes, focusing on your qualifications, skills, and contributions. To support this, we kindly ask that you refrain from including personal details such as your photo, age, or marital status in your CV, ensuring a fair and equitable evaluation based solely on your abilities and potential.

We are committed to providing an exceptional and accessible candidate experience for everyone. If you require any accommodations to support you throughout the hiring process, please let us know – we are here to assist you.

Discover more about our commitment to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace:

• Bring in your strong economics, experimentations, and scientific experience to develop and deploy advanced experimentation methods at scale.

• Support high stakes experiments and problem solving focused on customer/business impact and ensure decisions are made from robust insights.

• Set and own the processes to improve the quality of experimentation across Zalando experimentation domains.

• Design and implement state-of-the-art work needed for accurately measuring the business impact of AI-driven customer-facing products across various markets, customer segments, and fashion assortment. 

• Work closely with applied science leaders, product managers and other business stakeholders to leverage state-of-the-art experimentations and data driven economics / experimentation approaches for the challenging domain of Size&Fit in online fashion.

• Mentor senior and junior applied scientists on best experimentation practices.

• You have a PhD in Econometrics, Statistics, Mathematics, Physics, Operations Research or related field with at least 4 years of industry experience in Applied Experimentation or Statistics.

• Strong fundamentals of Statistical Analysis.

• Deep understanding of the theory behind the state-of-the-art methods in your domain as well as a broad overview of data science best practices in your field.

• Proven industry experience in designing, executing, and analyzing A/B tests, including expertise in defining relevant metrics and a deep understanding of statistical power calculations.

• Experience in driving business / customer impact analysis and decision making in AI-driven customer-facing products.

• Data intuition: extensive experience of working with large online datasets, ability to identify appropriate statistical modeling assumptions and approaches.

• Strong coding skills in Python and/or R as well as experience with common big data processing and manipulation tools such as Spark and SQL.

• Nice to have: experience with Cloud Computing frameworks (e.g., AWS), other programming languages such as Scala.

At Zalando, we deeply understand that Size Matters. We are excited to use our unique and large article and customer datasets to tackle this challenge using Deep Learning and Computer Vision techniques. How about you; would you like to bring in your skills to shape a great experience for your family and friends when buying clothes and shoes online?

You will join our multidisciplinary Zurich & Berlin-based Size and Fit Team, composed of applied scientists, software engineers, product managers, fashion and design experts from 20+ different nationalities. We help customers find the right fit the first time around and conduct focused experiments using emerging technologies to solve the sizing problem for customers, brand partners and the online fashion industry.

You will take on this complex and important topic working side by side with our product managers, applied scientists, software engineers, and product designers. We have great problems to solve, a huge customer base to impact and are a team that loves to have fun. Size and Fit is a human topic. We use machines to help solve our customers' challenges. But we never forget - size and fit success is defined by how customers feel when they wear fashion.
 

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 Lounge by Zalando, discounts from external partners 

• 2 paid volunteering days a year 

• Hybrid working model with up to 60% remote per week, actual practice is up to each team to best support their collaboration 

• Work from abroad for up to 30 working days a year 

• 25 days of vacation a year for full-time employees 

• Health and wellbeing options (SportAbo in Zurich) 

• Swiss SBB Halbtax (half-fare card) 

• 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:  

Please note that all applications must be completed using the online form - we do not accept applications via email.

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.