Job Description

Location
Berlin
Contract
Full time
Job Category
Applied Science & Research

THE ROLE & THE TEAM

Join our Logistics Algorithms team, where we use research and technology to optimise warehouse throughput while maintaining high fulfillment quality. As the only Applied Scientist while your colleague is on parental leave, you’ll play a key role in driving research initiatives and collaborating closely with Software Engineers.


You’ll translate real-world logistics challenges into mathematical models, design optimisation algorithms, and help build and maintain the systems that run them. If you're passionate about scalable software systems and discrete optimisation, this is your chance to make a real impact.


We’re a collaborative team of 4 Software Engineers and 1 Applied Scientist, working with Kotlin, Spring Boot, and Postgres in a microservices setup, with a flat, agile structure and shared ownership across roles.


Find out more about our Software Engineering team: https://jobs.zalando.com/en/what-we-do/software-engineering

WHAT WE’D LOVE YOU TO DO (AND LOVE DOING)

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Contribute to modelling, solving, and implementing our research-driven optimisation framework for warehouse throughput. Constantly challenge and improve our existing algorithms and modelling approaches. Deliver end-to-end solutions from domain understanding to prototyping and operating production software. Collaborate closely with Software Engineers to understand system constraints and co-create robust solutions. Identify commonalities across problems and propose generalised approaches. Promote an inclusive and collaborative team environment, encouraging knowledge sharing and mutual learning.

WE’D LOVE TO MEET YOU IF

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You have a strong academic background in combinatorial optimisation and a deep understanding of discrete optimisation concepts (e.g. min-cost flows, linear/integer programming, TSP, bin packing). You enjoy simplifying complex problems — but know when complex algorithms are needed. You bring hands-on experience in software engineering, ideally in a JVM-based language, and are eager to deepen your knowledge. You are familiar with some of the standard concepts such as microservice architectures, design patterns, Spring Boot, REST, Kubernetes, architecture documentation, data and API specifications (e.g. OpenAPI), quality assurance and testing methods. You’re curious about logistics systems and motivated to build deep domain expertise. You are a strong team player who values open communication and agile collaboration. You are fluent in English.

If you think you have what it takes, we encourage you to