Engineering Manager / Lounge by Zalando (all genders)

THE ROLE & THE TEAM

Lounge by Zalando is an online shopping club for fashion and lifestyle products, serving millions of members across 20+ European markets. Demand Tech sits at the intersection of acquisition, engagement, and AI enablement building the systems that attract customers, understand their intent, personalise their experience, and increasingly automate marketing workflows.

As an Engineering Manager in Demand Tech, you will lead a multidisciplinary team of backend and fullstack engineers, alongside ML and GenAI engineers. You will work closely with Principal Engineers and Product to shape and deliver systems across customer acquisition, personalisation, data platforms and AI‑driven capabilities.

Your team operates across a broad and impactful scope—from customer‑facing experiences (e.g. landing pages, homepage, CRM channels) to the data and ML/AI platforms that power them. You will play a key role in scaling how Lounge delivers personalised, localised, and increasingly autonomous marketing experiences, while fostering a strong culture of ownership, engineering excellence and pragmatic delivery.

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 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)

• Lead and grow a high‑performing team: build, mentor and empower a diverse engineering team across backend, fullstack and ML/GenAI; create an inclusive, high‑trust environment with strong ownership, continuous learning and healthy team dynamics.
• Own delivery of impactful systems: drive the development of customer‑facing and platform capabilities that directly influence acquisition, engagement and conversion—from personalisation and CRM systems to data and AI‑powered features.
• Shape architecture and technical direction: define and evolve the architecture across backend, data and ML/AI systems in close collaboration with Principal Engineers; balance speed and quality, and make pragmatic decisions in a complex, multi‑domain environment.
• Bridge software and applied science: enable your team to build and operate ML and LLM‑based systems in production—from data pipelines to model integration and evaluation.
• Champion operational excellence: ensure reliability, scalability and cost‑awareness across systems. Establish clear KPIs/SLOs, improve observability and lead incident response for business‑critical services.
• Collaborate and influence: work closely with Product, Data & AI and other engineering teams across Zalando. Navigate dependencies, align on shared platforms and communicate effectively with both technical and non‑technical stakeholders.

QUALIFICATIONS

• Proven engineering leadership: significant experience as an Engineering Manager with a strong track record of building, developing and retaining high‑performing teams. You set clear expectations, provide candid feedback, manage performance and support engineers in growing their impact and careers. You have led teams through change and hiring, creating an environment where people are challenged and supported.
• Solid technical foundation: experience in backend and distributed systems (e.g. Kotlin, Java, Python), cloud‑native architectures (AWS preferred) and data‑intensive applications.
• Exposure to ML or applied science in production: experience working with teams that build or integrate ML/AI systems (e.g. personalisation, recommendation or LLM‑based features). You understand the lifecycle and trade‑offs.
• Product and business mindset: experience building customer‑facing systems and understanding how technical decisions impact metrics such as conversion, engagement or revenue.
• Strong architectural thinking: ability to navigate complex systems, define direction with senior engineers and make pragmatic trade‑offs across multiple domains.
• Operational mindset: experience running reliable systems in production, including monitoring, incident handling and continuous improvement.
• Clear communication and stakeholder management: ability to explain complex topics simply, influence decisions and collaborate effectively across engineering, product and business teams.

OUR 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 up to each team to best support their collaboration
• Work from abroad for up to 30 working 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