Head of Applied Science Growth & Lifecycle / Lounge by Zalando (all genders)

Role: Head of Applied Science Growth & Lifecycle / Lounge by Zalando (all genders) Role Overview: Lounge by Zalando is our off-price shopping club, serving millions of members across 20+ European markets. We are looking for a Head of Applied Science to set the scientific direction for Growth & Lifecycle, advancing how we acquire, activate, engage, and retain customers. Reporting to the Director in Lounge Tech, you will lead and develop applied science talent and own the research and machine-learning agenda for this domain. Your remit spans customer lifetime value modelling, marketing effectiveness and incrementality, personalisation, and automated customer engagement. This is a scientific leadership role, not a product management role. You will be accountable for scientific quality, the development of your science organisation, and the measurable impact of its models and decision systems. Responsibilities: - Set the Applied Science Agenda: Define and drive a coherent research and ML strategy for Growth & Lifecycle. Build a portfolio that balances longer-term scientific advances with near-term customer and commercial impact. - Build and Develop Scientific Talent: Hire, coach, and develop applied scientists and scientific leaders. Set clear expectations for scientific craft and career progression, provide substantive technical mentorship, and build a culture of rigorous peer review, reproducible research, and shared learning. - Provide Deep Scientific Leadership: Guide problem formulation, method selection, and model design across lifetime value prediction, causal inference, uplift modelling, personalisation, and decision optimisation. - Take Research into Production: Own the scientific lifecycle from hypothesis and baselines through offline evaluation, online experimentation, and ongoing model improvement. Partner with Engineering on reliable deployment, monitoring, and retraining. - Prove Incremental Business Impact: Establish how scientific advances translate into better acquisition efficiency, activation, retention, and customer lifetime value. Use controlled experiments and causal methods to distinguish genuine incremental value from correlation. - Advance Responsible AI and Automation: Identify where AI/ML, including agentic approaches, can improve marketing and lifecycle decisions. Evaluate new methods against robust baselines and establish safeguards for privacy, bias, customer experience, and human oversight before scaling. - Shape Direction with Cross-functional Leaders: Partner with Product, Engineering, Analytics, and Marketing to turn scientific opportunities into shared priorities. Explain uncertainty, evidence, and investment trade-offs clearly to senior leaders. Qualifications: - Applied Science Leadership: Strong track record of leading applied science or machine-learning teams, hiring and developing scientific talent, and delivering impact through others. - Scientific Depth: Deep expertise in machine learning, statistics, and experimentation, with strong experience in one or more of causal inference, marketing science, personalisation, or optimisation. - Research-to-Production Experience: Led the development and deployment of models or algorithmic decision systems in a commercial environment. Understand the full lifecycle, including data quality, reproducibility, offline-to-online evaluation, model drift, and operational trade-offs. - Evidence of Incremental Impact: Can show how scientific work changed real customer or business outcomes, not only offline model metrics. Comfortable designing experiments, reasoning about confounding and uncertainty, and making investment decisions when evidence is incomplete. - Growth and Lifecycle Understanding: Can translate acquisition, activation, retention, and customer lifetime value challenges into scientific problems. Experience in consumer marketplaces, e-commerce, subscriptions, or another high-volume consumer setting is valuable. - Strategic Communication and Collaboration: Communicate complex scientific ideas clearly in English, influence senior stakeholders, and build effective partnerships across disciplines. - Research Foundations: PhD or Master's degree in a relevant quantitative discipline, or equivalent applied research experience. A record of impactful research, publications, patents, or open-source contributions is welcome. - Off-price or fashion domain knowledge is a bonus. 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 - 27 days of vacation a year to start - Relocation assistance available (subject to prior agreement) - Family services, including counseling and support - Health and wellbeing options (including Gympass) - Mental health support and coaching available - Drive your development through our training platform and biannual peer-to-peer review