Principal Applied Scientist (Economics, Experimentation & Platform Analytics) at Zalando Search & Discovery (All genders)

THE ROLE AND THE TEAM

As a Principal in the Search & Discovery team at Zalando, you will serve as the insights, measurement and experimentation backbone of the Visibility program to improve the Zalando Marketplace for our customers and partners. You will investigate and design marketplace dynamics, develop causal inference frameworks, and conduct exploratory data analysis that spans Search, Catalog, Recommendations, and the broader S&D platform. Your work will directly inform strategic trade-off decisions around Zalando’s platform dynamics and health, turning data into insights that shape product development and program direction.

Unlike a purely experimentation-focused role, this position has an equally important mandate in platform health monitoring and opportunity analysis, and benefits from a strong understanding about the economics of multi-sided marketplaces: identifying structural shifts in visibility outcomes, diagnosing their root causes, and quantifying the business implications for Zalando's marketplace. You will collaborate with Applied Scientists, Data Engineers, Product Managers, and commercial stakeholders across S&D and beyond.

Find out more about our team here: https://jobs.zalando.com/en/what-we-do#job-categories

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

• Design and execute analytical frameworks for the Visibility domain, covering KPI & metrics definition for unbiased platform health.

• Support visibility interaction by complex target and trade-off investigations.

• Lead an experimentation roadmap with a focus on the relationship between short-term experiment signals and long-term platform health effects and dynamics.

• Conduct exploratory, hypothesis-driven data analysis to identify visibility opportunities and structural risks across S&D and beyond, translating analytical findings into actionable insights for product and commercial stakeholders.

• Apply quasi-experimental and causal inference methods to observational data — including Double Machine Learning, difference-in-differences, and causal forests — to establish causal relationships where randomized experiments are infeasible.

• Build and maintain platform health monitoring frameworks that track visibility KPIs over time, detect anomalies, and surface early signals of marketplace imbalances before they become business issues.

• Use economic modeling and first-principles reasoning to support trade-off decisions between competing visibility objectives.

WE'D LOVE TO MEET YOU IF

• Master or above (PhD) in quantitative economics, computer science or a related quantitative discipline with a strong foundation in econometrics, statistics and computational methods and 4+ years of relevant industry experience.

• You possess deep expertise in experimentation design and quasi-experimental research methods such as Double Machine Learning, difference-in-differences, synthetic control, and causal forests. 

• You have experience in domains that combine economic modeling with empirical research (Empirical Industrial Organisation, Structural Estimation)

• You have strong experience conducting exploratory data analysis at scale and communicating findings clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences, including senior leadership.

• You are a hands-on owner and builder who driving large initiatives across departments. You are proficient in Python and SQL, with hands-on experience using Jupyter Notebooks, Airflow, PySpark, Databricks, and Git.

• You are comfortable with ML methods and frameworks (scikit-learn, PyTorch) and are able to apply them to causal and predictive modeling tasks.

• You demonstrate strong general scientific problem-solving skills and the ability to scope ambiguous analytical questions into structured research plans.

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 Lounge by Zalando, discounts from external partners

• 2 paid volunteering days a year

• 27 days of vacation a year to start for full-time employees

• Relocation assistance available (subject to prior agreement)

• Family services, including counseling 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

INCLUSIVE BY DESIGN

At Zalando, our vision is to be the leading pan-European ecosystem for fashion and lifestyle e-commerce - one that is inclusive by design. We only assess candidates based on qualifications, merit, and business needs. We welcome applications from people of all gender identities, sexual orientations, personal expressions, racial identities, ethnicities, religious beliefs, and disability statuses. We only want to know why you’re great for this role, so please avoid including your picture, age, and marital status in your CV as well.

We want to provide you with a great candidate experience. Please feel free to inform us of any accommodations you may need, so we can best support and assist you throughout the hiring process.

do.BETTER - our diversity & inclusion strategy: https://jobs.zalando.com/en/our-culture/diversity-and-inclusion