Senior Applied Scientist - Agentic AI

📍 Berlin (relocation support provided)

THE ROLE & THE TEAM

In Customer Care Technology, we build the intelligent applications and infrastructure driving the full customer journey, supporting millions of customers and thousands of customer care specialists. We are seeking a Senior Applied Scientist to join our Berlin-based Applied Science team in a business-critical role. In this position, you will design, build, and scale cutting-edge Agentic AI systems and Large Language Models (LLMs) for high-volume production, directly optimizing customer self-service solutions to handle millions of queries monthly. Working closely with a cross-functional team of data engineers, software engineers, analysts, and product managers, you will turn scientific innovations into scalable AI products that elevate the customer experience.

INCLUSIVE BY DESIGN

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.

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

• Drive End-to-End Research: Translate ambiguous, high-impact business challenges in Customer Care Technology into structured research plans, leading projects from discovery to production deployment.

• Build Agentic Systems: Apply rigorous scientific methodologies to design, fine-tune, evaluate, and scale advanced LLM applications and agentic workflows.

• Own Production Models: Take end-to-end accountability for AI models in production—including architecture design, performance optimization, deployment, and real-time monitoring at scale.

• Elevate Standards: Establish best practices for research methodologies, ensuring high-quality, reproducible experiments across the team.

• Mentor & Inspire: Coach junior Applied Scientists, fostering a culture of scientific rigor, innovation, and operational excellence.

• Collaborate Cross-Functionally: Partner with product managers, data engineers, and software engineers to seamlessly integrate AI solutions into production services.

 WE’D LOVE TO MEET YOU IF

• AI Productionization: You have a strong track record of autonomously tackling complex research projects and shipping scientific innovations into customer-facing AI products at scale.

• Core LLM Expertise: You have extensive expertise in Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Natural Language Processing (NLP), with a focus on building and scaling production-grade LLM applications.

• Agentic System Design: You have a strong understanding of agentic architectures, agent orchestration, hallucination mitigation, and retrieval augmented generation (RAG). 

• Engineering & Tech Stack: You have excellent programming skills in Python (including frameworks like PyTorch and PydanticAI), strong SQL skills, and hands-on experience with Databricks.

• Strategic Communication: You have the ability to think strategically and effectively translate complex technical concepts into clear, actionable insights for non-experts and senior leadership.

• Agile & Collaborative Mindset: You have a results-driven, collaborative mindset, feel comfortable navigating high-uncertainty environments, and actively take initiative to uncover high-value research opportunities.

 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.

• 27 days of holiday a year to start for full-time employees (+1 day for every calendar year up to 30 days)

• 2 paid volunteering days a year

• Employee shares programme

• 40% off fashion and beauty products sold and shipped by Zalando, 30% off Lounge by Zalando, discounts from external partners

• Relocation assistance available (subject to prior agreement)

• Family services, including counselling and support

• Health and wellbeing options (including Wellhub, formerly Gympass)

• Mental health support and coaching available

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