Engineering Manager - Content Team

Join us to help drive the development of the ZMS advertisement platform that strives to inspire, engage and inform Zalando shoppers through unparalleled brand-curated and highly relevant advertising experiences, seamlessly supporting our customer’s shopping journey by empowering our partners to promote their brand, stories, and products.

As the Engineering Manager of the Content team, you will lead six engineers responsible for the content that Zalando partners (brands, retailers, etc.) show in Zalando, including organic and sponsored content. You will own both the look and feel of the different formats, like Boards, Landing Pages and Ads, as well as the Content Workspace tooling that partners use to upload assets and compose these formats. Your leadership will directly impact ZMS’s ability to scale revenue growth from advertising by enabling self‑service content management tooling and creating formats that are engaging for users and attractive for partners to sponsor.

INCLUSIVE BY DESIGN

At Zalando, our vision is to be the starting point for fashion – one that is inclusive by design. We assess candidates based on qualifications, merit, and business needs, welcoming applicants 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, or marital status in your CV.

Responsibilities

• Lead, coach, and mentor a high-performing engineering team, fostering a culture of ownership, psychological safety, and continuous learning through active coaching and feedback.
• Collaborate with Product and Engineering leadership to shape and deliver the technical roadmap; define mid‑to‑long‑term technical goals, ensure seamless collaboration across teams, and translate business requirements into scalable, high‑quality technical solutions.
• Demonstrate strong product ownership and insight; deeply understand the product, market, and business context to inform technical strategy, constructively challenge priorities, and align engineering efforts with maximum business impact.
• Oversee strategic architecture and technical direction, driving excellence in core systems while remaining technically sharp enough to participate in architecture reviews and provide hands‑on solutions for complex challenges.
• Elevate quality by defining and enforcing engineering standards, from CI/CD pipelines to robust testing strategies (TDD/E2E); ensure secure, high‑performance services, manage infrastructure costs, and make informed trade‑offs between scalability, reliability, and maintainability.
• Recruit top‑tier talent by actively shaping team structure, identifying gaps, and driving the hiring process to attract engineers who share our values and possess the required skills.
• Build and retain a high-performing team by establishing effective rituals, identifying process improvements, and fostering continuous learning through knowledge sharing and mentorship.

Qualifications

• Proven leadership experience managing an engineering team in a fast‑paced environment.
• Solid background in full‑stack software engineering with frontend technologies (e.g., React) and backend technologies (Node.js, JVM ecosystem such as Kotlin/Java); mobile app experience (iOS, Android) is a plus.
• Experience with modern architecture patterns (Microservices, Event‑Driven, REST/OpenAPI) and AWS services and containerization; ability to build resilient, customer‑facing, scalable, and maintainable systems.
• Hands‑on mentality: ability to lead architecture reviews and contribute to complex architectural decisions while maintaining a strong grasp of engineering details.
• Business acumen: translate technical debt and infrastructure needs into clear business value for stakeholders, especially regarding user‑facing interfaces and compliance (e.g., European Accessibility Act).
• Fluent English communication skills, able to navigate technical complexity and business requirements with equal ease and serve as a bridge between Engineering, Product, and Sales.

Benefits

• Employee shares program
• 40% off fashion and beauty products sold and shipped by Zalando; 30% off Zalando Lounge; discounts from external partners
• 2 paid volunteering days a year
• Hybrid working model with flexible hours and up to 60% remote per week, with team discretion over collaboration practices
• Work from abroad for up to 30 working days a year
• 27 days of vacation a year to start
• Relocation assistance available (subject to prior agreement)
• Family services, including counselling and support
• Health and wellbeing options (including Gympass)
• Mental health support and coaching available