Principal Software Engineer

Job Description

In this role as Principal Software Engineer, you will guide multiple teams within the Partner Tech department. Partner Tech is one of the core organisations within Zalando. We are responsible for sourcing fashion products and consumer goods into Zalando. Through our platform and tools, we provide a wide range of products to customers all over Europe. The organization is composed of more than 300 talented individuals who are dedicated to creating the best platform and inspiring opportunities for multi-million euro fashion brands and physical retail stores, connecting them with consumers across multiple European markets. You will be responsible for elevating architectural and software engineering standards, mentoring engineers, and leading platform engineering initiatives. As a key member of the leadership team, you will collaborate closely with Engineering Managers, other Principal Software Engineers and Product Managers.

Job Responsibility

Define and drive the long-term technical vision and architecture for a scalable platform approach to Partner Lifecycle Management, exploring and implementing a platform-oriented approach to ensure scalability, reliability, security, and cross-team adoption
Break down complex solutions into iterations to reduce risk and complexity, and ship large scale projects to production by driving, mentoring, designing and code contributions
Contribute to improving the operational excellence of the systems owned by the department
Drive or provide hands-on support for time critical investigation during incidents
Act as a sparring partner to tech and product leadership by researching, proposing, and driving pragmatic solutions that improve developer productivity, operational effectiveness, and overall engineering impact
Collaborate with other senior individual contributors to set engineering standards, guide decision-making for the technology landscape at Zalando
Elevate engineering excellence by mentoring engineers at all levels, guiding complex technical decisions, and actively sharing expertise across teams to strengthen our broader engineering and science community

Requirements

Demonstrated experience defining and driving long-term architectural vision for complex domains, ideally transforming business capabilities (such as Partner Lifecycle Management or similar ecosystems) into scalable, platform-oriented solutions adopted across multiple teams
Deep expertise in designing resilient, secure, and scalable distributed systems in AWS-based infrastructures, with strong experience in Kubernetes and modern platform patterns
Solid command of JVM based languages (Scala, Kotlin, Java)
Proven track record of leading large, ambiguous initiatives from concept to production, decomposing them into iterative deliveries while staying hands-on in architecture and critical implementations
Excel at driving cross-organizational collaboration, aligning technical strategy with business priorities and customer impact
Substantial experience improving operational excellence in production systems, leading operational reviews, driving post-mortems, implementing reliability frameworks (SLOs, observability, incident management), and supporting critical investigations when needed
Curious and forward-looking, with experience evaluating and responsibly adopting emerging technologies, including AI-powered engineering tools, to enhance developer productivity and system effectiveness

What we offer

27 days of holiday a year to start for full-time employees
2 paid volunteering days a year
Hybrid working model with up to 60% remote per week
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

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Principal Software Engineer - Partner Tech

Job Description

Job Responsibility

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What we offer

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