THE ROLE & THE TEAM

We are looking for a Principal Machine Learning Engineer to drive the evolution of Zalando’s large-scale recommendation and search systems. In this strategic role you’ll collaborate with cross-functional partners to deliver cutting-edge, personalised experiences that serve millions of customers across Europe. You will play a key role in productionizing ML models, optimizing pipelines, and ensuring seamless deployment of high-performing recommendations and search systems.
You’ll join the Recommendations & Search department, shaping how customers discover products they love, and how ML engineering supports rapid iteration and experimentation while ensuring platform reliability.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

Architect, build, and scale end-to-end ML systems for retrieval, ranking, and recommendation models in both real-time and batch environments.
Lead the design of ML infrastructure, ensuring reliability, performance, and observability across training and inference workflows.
Drive ML Ops best practices.
Partner with Data Scientists, Engineers, and Product Managers to turn ideas into production-grade solutions with measurable business impact.
Mentor and guide engineers, review designs, and set technical direction.
Evaluate and implement new technologies to expand our capabilities.
Champion reusability and scalability, enabling faster iteration cycles and reducing tech debt across recommendation/search pipelines.