Principal Data Scientist - Ranking & Visibility (all genders)

Role: Principal Data Scientist - Ranking & Visibility Responsibilities: - Turn business strategy into data and analytics frameworks and roadmaps that inform long-term ranking objectives. - Design and analyze large online experiments, including long-term effects and interference between buyers and sellers. - Develop methods for brand diversity, long-tail exposure and new-article exploration. - Work with engineers to bring models and methods into production at scale. - Set scientific direction, mentor scientists and influence senior stakeholders with evidence. - Build and maintain platform health monitoring frameworks that track visibility KPIs over time, detect anomalies, and surface early signals of marketplace imbalances before they become business issues. - Use economic modeling and first-principles reasoning to support trade-off decisions between competing visibility objectives. Qualifications: - Master's or above (PhD) in quantitative economics, computer science, or a related quantitative discipline with a strong foundation in econometrics, statistics, and computational methods, and 4+ years of relevant industry experience. - Expertise in experimentation design and quasi-experimental research methods such as Double Machine Learning, difference-in-differences, synthetic control, and causal forests. - Strong experience conducting exploratory data analysis at scale and communicating findings clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences, including senior leadership. - Hands-on owner and builder who drives large initiatives across departments. - Proficient in Python and SQL, with hands-on experience using Jupyter Notebooks, Airflow, PySpark, Databricks, Git, and AWS. - Enthusiastic about using AI engineering in workflows and contributing to the team's agentic research and engineering setup. 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) - 40% off fashion and beauty products sold and shipped by Zalando, 30% off Lounge by Zalando, discounts from external partners - Family support, including counselling and dedicated services for parents and carers - Company pension scheme - Employee shares programme - Health and wellbeing options, including Wellhub - Mental health support and coaching - Development through our training platform and biannual peer-to-peer review - 2 paid volunteering days a year - Relocation assistance (subject to prior agreement)