Senior Applied Science Leader

THE ROLE & THE TEAM


Lounge by Zalando is an online outlet for fashion and lifestyle products in 24 European countries. We offer our members daily, time-limited sale campaigns with discounts of up to 75% off the recommended retail price. However, Lounge by Zalando is so much more than discounts.

Customers sign up with their email addresses and can shop daily curated selections of limited-time promotional deals. Unlike Zalando, we don't operate through a permanent catalog. The campaign model is a crucial differentiator and invites customers to experience Zalando's fashion credibility with the additional elements of surprise and great value for money.

Our strength lies in our focus on fashion and lifestyle brands from sought-after labels to niche brands, from famous international names to trendy luxury brands, we make sure to meet the fashion taste of all our customers, who are always on the hunt for the best products at the best prices. Working with our brand partners, we're pioneering innovative supply-chain and production processes and offer them an impactful and smart solution, creating a new way to shop for fashion - and a new way to sell it.

This role is about building the scientific engine that dictates how we deploy capital, based on causal inference and incrementality based experimentation. As a core leader of our Applied Science team in Lounge, you will act as a critical enabler for our Marketing, CRM, and Commercial Planning & Steering leadership. In this role, you will lead the building of frameworks that allow investment decisions across the portfolio to be done through marginal return on investments (ROI), with the capability to compare brand campaigns, against Meta or CRM to drive efficiencies.

This role is about building a best-in-class estimation system but also it’s about driving adoption, governance, and enhancing decision-making. We believe that a tight, day-to-day loop between rigorous science and marketing execution is what truly unlocks impact.

Mandate You will build this foundation from the ground up. Your primary mandate is to treat our 24-country operational footprint as a highly dynamic financial portfolio. By leveraging advanced predictive analytics and bespoke Media Mix Modeling (MMM), you will build the tooling required to make complex business and financial trade-offs, ensuring every decision is mathematically optimized to drive both top-line revenue and bottom-line profitability.


Technical Challenge You will own the scientific roadmap for marketing effectiveness. This requires

• Advanced Experimentation Continuous deployment of geo-experiments and quasi-experimental methods such as synthetic control or difference-in-differences (DiD) analyses to estimate incremental yield and continuously calibrate our MMM and MTA.
• Low-Latency Infrastructure Because the Lounge model relies on ephemeral inventory and 72-hour campaign windows, your measurement ecosystem must operate with exceptionally low latency.
• Eradicating Bias Design incremental attribution models that follow industry best practices, to reduce the bias of legacy methods and increase precision.
  
  
  

Because this role will become the backbone for all major investment decisions, you will partner closely with the teams owning commercial decision making to influence and upgrade our overarching forecasting and budgeting frameworks. Moreover, supplying Customer Data and Insights for our Customer Engagement Strategy, along with ongoing Budget planning (both Long and Short Term), are key areas of focus. To support this, the team's role is to be responsible for maintaining and enhancing the data infrastructure within the Marketing (Demand) organization.

Commercial Challenges Beyond the technical complexity of the role, your success will be defined by your ability to drive real-world business outcomes. You will actively tackle

• Cross-Functional Enablement Building the science is only the first step. The true challenge lies in embedding these predictive frameworks into the daily rhythm of Marketing, CRM, and Commercial Planning & Steering (CP&S). You will need exceptional collaboration skills to bridge the gap between data science and commercial execution, ensuring your models are trusted, adopted, and used to steer day-to-day operations.
• Commercial Acumen & Bottom-Line Impact You must possess a relentless drive to move the needle. You will be challenged to translate complex, abstract data into sharp, senior-level commercial recommendations. We are looking for a leader with the commercial acumen to deeply understand our volatile flash-sale economics and confidently advocate for financial trade-offs that directly maximize our profitability and growth.
  
  
  
  

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.

Discover more about our commitment to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace https //jobs.zalando.com/en/our-culture/diversity-and-inclusion


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

• Own the Measurement Ecosystem Lead the evolution of our unified measurement framework, integrating Bayesian Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM), geo-experimentation, and multi-touch attribution (MTA) tailored to the extreme volatility of a flash-sale model.
• Drive Commercial impact Connect complex data science with frontline commercial execution, building the trust and adoption necessary to operationalize your models across our daily business steering.

Discover our full range of relocation jobs with comprehensive support packages to help you relocate and settle in your new location.

• Optimize Capital Allocation Act as the strategic partner to the Lounge Management Team and your core stakeholders (Marketing, CRM, Markets). Use machine learning (pLTV, churn probability) and marginal ROI optimization algorithms to guide how and where we deploy our performance and brand marketing budgets across Europe.
• Lead and Develop a Scientific Team Manage, mentor, and hire a high-performing team of Data Scientists and Analysts. You are responsible for their professional growth and their ability to translate key business questions into advanced analytics, leading to actionable business recommendations.
• Operationalize Causal Inference Design and oversee a continuous testing pipeline (A/B, geo-matched markets, synthetic control) to provide trustworthy estimates of the incremental lift of our campaigns.
• Algorithm & Bidding Strategy Collaborate with ML engineering and ad-tech teams to feed our first-party data and LTV models back into platform bidding algorithms (Meta, Google) to optimize for long-term customer value, not just immediate CPA.
  
  
  
  

WE’D LOVE TO MEET YOU IF

• Experience Masters or PhD in Computer Science, Economics, Mathematics or related quantitative fields, with 8+ years in leading Applied Science, Economics, or Machine Learning Teams. Should have expertise in collaborating deeply with Engineering teams to deploy solutions at scale in low latency environments.
• Mindset You are data-driven, constantly challenging the status quota and moving the needle in terms of actual ROIs that come through to the platform. You understand the limitations of both deterministic tracking and leverage probabilistic modeling,and uncertainties to hone in towards trustworthy estimates and robust systems.
• Communication You can explain the concept of diminishing marginal returns and Causal Inference to a room full of creatives and finance directors without losing their attention, or their trust.
• Commercial Acumen You don't build models for the sake of academic purity; you build them to drive profitable revenue growth.
  
  
  
  

  Interested in relocating to Germany? Check out our comprehensive Relocation Jobs in Germany page with detailed relocation packages and benefits.

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
• 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
• Employee shares program
• 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 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