Senior Applied Scientist - Agentic AI

About the role

Join Zalando's Applied Science team in Berlin to design, build, and scale cutting‑edge Agentic AI systems and large language models for high‑volume customer care. You will turn scientific innovations into production‑ready AI products that handle millions of queries each month.

Key responsibilities

• Translate ambiguous business challenges into structured research plans and lead projects from discovery to production deployment.
• Design, fine‑tune, evaluate, and scale advanced LLM applications and agentic workflows.
• Own end‑to‑end AI model lifecycle, including architecture, performance optimization, deployment, and real‑time monitoring at scale.
• Establish best practices for research methodology and ensure reproducible experiments.
• Mentor junior Applied Scientists and collaborate with product managers, data engineers, and software engineers.

Required profile

• Proven track record of independently delivering complex research projects and shipping AI products to production.
• Deep expertise in Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Natural Language Processing with a focus on production‑grade LLM applications.
• Strong understanding of agentic architectures, orchestration, hallucination mitigation, and retrieval‑augmented generation.
• Excellent communication skills to translate technical concepts for non‑experts and senior leadership.

Required skills

• Python programming (including PyTorch and PydanticAI frameworks).
• SQL and hands‑on experience with Databricks.
• Experience with Large Language Models and NLP pipelines.
• Knowledge of agentic system design and RAG techniques.

What we offer

• 27 days of holiday per year (plus additional days based on tenure).
• Paid volunteering days, employee share programme, and substantial discounts on fashion and beauty products.
• Relocation assistance, family services, health and wellbeing options, and mental health support.
• Opportunities for professional development through training platforms and peer‑to‑peer reviews.