Applied Scientist - LLMs / Agentic AI (all genders)

THE ROLE & THE TEAM In Customer Care Technology, we build the intelligent applications and infrastructure driving the full customer journey, supporting millions of customers and thousands of customer care specialists. We are seeking an Applied Scientist to join our Berlin-based Applied Science team in a business-critical role. In this position, you will design, build, and scale cutting-edge AI systems, leveraging a mix of Deep Learning, LLMs and Agentic workflows for high-volume production, directly optimizing customer self-service solutions to handle millions of queries monthly. Working closely with a cross-functional team of data engineers, software engineers, analysts, and product managers, you will turn scientific innovations into scalable AI products that elevate the customer experience. WHAT WE'D LOVE YOU TO DO (AND LOVE DOING) - Define Research Plans: Translate business challenges in Customer Care Technology into structured research plans, executing projects from discovery to production deployment. - Build AI Applications: Apply scientific methodologies to design, evaluate, and scale DL and LLM applications, ranging from predictive models to agentic workflows. - Own Production Systems: Take accountability to the end-to-end lifecycle of AI models in production, including design, performance optimization, deployment, and monitoring. - Collaborate & Learn: Work with product managers, data engineers, and software engineers to integrate AI solutions into the very fabric of our customer service. - Elevate Best Practices: Define and maintain best practices for research methodologies, ensuring high-quality, reproducible experiments. WE'D LOVE TO MEET YOU IF - Production Experience: You have a track record of tackling research projects and contributing to the productionization of customer-facing AI products. - DL/LLM Expertise: You have strong expertise in Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Natural Language Processing (NLP), with experience building LLM applications. - AI System Design: You have a solid understanding of modern AI architectures, including systems utilising deep learning models, agentic workflows, and RAG. - Engineering & Tech Stack: You have strong programming skills in Python (including frameworks like PyTorch and PydanticAI), SQL skills, and experience with data platforms like Databricks. - Communication: You can effectively communicate technical concepts to both technical peers and business stakeholders. - Collaborative Mindset: You are results-driven, comfortable navigating uncertainty, and proactive in taking initiative to uncover high-value research opportunities. OUR OFFER Zalando provides a range of benefits, here's an overview of what you can expect. Ask your Talent Acquisition Partner to learn more about what we 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 - 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