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Join the Search Retrieval Team, the engine driving product and content discovery for Zalando. We build and operate the core search engine that connects over 62 million active customers across 29 markets with the products and content they love. Our Search Engine powers tens of millions of searchable content stored in multiple clusters and hundreds of indices distributed. Every content has ~4-10 embeddings that power our semantic understanding. We also integrate with LLMs models to power our query understanding and lexical search. Our mission is to deliver a world-class, intelligent, scalable, and reliable Search Platform.
Job Responsibility
Architect the Future of Search: Lead the design and implementation of our next-generation, AI-driven search engine, integrating Neural Search on top of our Elasticsearch platform.
Build for Hyperscale: Modernize and scale our real-time data ingestion systems using technologies like Kafka and Flink to handle millions of updates.
Drive Platform Innovation: Develop core platform capabilities that enable teams across Zalando to build rich, personalized discovery experiences for our customers.
Drive Operational Excellence and Cost Efficiency: Lead platform-wide infrastructure projects, such as consolidating multi-lingual search indices, mitigating critical risks by migrating core services, and supporting system readiness for high-traffic events like Cyber Week.
Requirements
Deep Search Expertise: Extensive experience building large-scale, preferably e-commerce, search engines. While our stack is built on Elasticsearch, we highly value equivalent expertise in Lucene, OpenSearch, Solr, or other distributed search systems.
Real-Time Data Pipeline Experience: Proven ability to design and build high-throughput data ingestion pipelines using Kafka and/or Flink or equivalent stream-processing frameworks.
Strong Backend Foundation: High proficiency in a JVM language (Java, Kotlin, or Scala) and a deep understanding of distributed systems architecture, concurrency, and performance optimization.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Excellent communication skills. You thrive when working closely with fellow engineers, applied scientists, and product partners, and you possess a knack for translating complex product requirements into reusable, reliable platform capabilities.
What we offer
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 60% (or more) 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
27 days of vacation a year (for Zalando SE)
Relocation assistance available (subject to prior agreement)