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Zalando Expands European Tech Operations to Helsinki

August 27, 2015
Technology
  • Zalando has opened up its second technology hub outside of Germany with plans to create up to 200 jobs over the next few years
  • Local team will focus on customer-facing products such as new fashion apps
  • Expansion of the Tech Team in Dublin is on track, focusing on strong expertise in data science
  • Growth of the Tech Team in Berlin is still a major driver for Zalando’s goal to employ more than 2,000 engineers 
Opening Event Zalando Tech Helsinki
Opening Event Zalando Tech Helsinki

Zalando SE, Europe’s leading online fashion platform, continues to expand its technology operations internationally. Yesterday, the e-tailer opened up its new technology hub in Helsinki during a launch event in the office space and welcomed the local team to the company.  

Zalando aims to boost its fashion platform and increase offers to connect customers and brands. The new office in Helsinki will play a key role in this strategy by focusing on the development of innovative customer-facing products such as fashion apps. "The mobile trend continues to disrupt fashion e-commerce and is quickly moving away from simply shopping online. Mobile visits to our shop have already exceeded desktop visits, amounting to 57% in the second quarter of 2015. We are therefore heavily investing in our mobile capabilities”, says Philipp Erler, SVP Technology, Zalando. “Thanks to its strategic location, strong universities and a firmly established mobile sector, Helsinki provides the best possible environment for our new international tech hub. Furthermore, we want to become an established part of the Finnish tech community and partner up with local start-ups in the future.”

Zalando plans to create up to 200 jobs in Helsinki over the next few years. The e-tailer is actively recruiting full-stack and mobile developers, user experience specialists, data scientists, and product owners from across the industry, as well as academia to work on consumer-facing mobile apps. The on-site team will already amount to more than ten people by the end of September. 

The office in Helsinki constitutes Zalando’s second technology hub outside of Germany following the opening of the Fashion Insights Centre in Dublin earlier this year. The focus of operations in Ireland is deep data science and engineering research, involving R&D around how to build a real-time insight platform around fashion. The e-tailer’s on-site team will increase to more than 20 employees over the coming weeks. Zalando aims to create around 50 jobs in the first year of its operations in Dublin, seeing potential for several hundred long-term jobs in the future.    

Overall, Zalando’s Tech Team has grown to a total headcount of more than 800 employees across all locations, increasing from around 500 employees at the beginning of last year. Approximately 750 members of Zalando Technology are located at the company’s headquarters in Berlin. “We’re highly benefiting from the ongoing technology boom in Berlin. Our location at the heart of the European tech scene still is our main driver for the large-scale recruitment of top technologists”, says Philipp Erler. “We aim to employ more than 2,000 engineers by the end of 2016. In order to quickly and flexibly implement new ideas and innovations at a time of such major growth, we shifted the responsibility for decision-making from management to tech experts and successfully introduced the Radical Agility approach to our team in the early spring. By working on the four basic principles of purpose, autonomy, mastery and trust, we focus on the rapid deployment of a highly professional infrastructure providing the technical foundation for our fashion platform.”

Zalando Technology at a glance

  • Zalando’s Tech Team is located in Berlin (HQ), Dortmund, Erfurt and Mönchengladbach, Germany; Dublin, Ireland; Helsinki, Finland
  • More than 800 employees of over 50 different nationalities
  • Over 70 developer teams across all office locations
  • Small, agile, autonomous teams applying the Radical Agility approach, based on purpose, autonomy, mastery and trust
  • Zalando platform mostly built in-house, using open source and cutting-edge technologies such as React, Scala, Python, Cassandra, Clojure, AWS, and Docker
  • Five key principles of building systems: API First, REST, SaaS, cloud, and microservices

 

ABOUT ZALANDO
Zalando (https://corporate.zalando.com) is Europe’s leading online fashion platform for women, men and children. We offer our customers a one-stop, convenient shopping experience with an extensive selection of fashion articles including shoes, apparel and accessories, with free delivery and returns. Our assortment of over 1,500 international brands ranges from popular global brands, fast fashion and local brands, and is complemented by our private label products. Our localized offering addresses the distinct preferences of our customers in each of the 15 European markets we serve: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Poland and the United Kingdom. Our logistics network with three centrally located fulfillment centers in Germany allows us to efficiently serve our customers throughout Europe. We believe that our integration of fashion, operations and online technology give us the capability to deliver a compelling value proposition to both our customers and fashion brand partners.

Zalando’s shops attract over 135 million visits per month. In the second quarter of 2015, around 57 per cent of traffic came from mobile devices, resulting in close to 16.4 million active customers by the end of the quarter.

CONTACT ZALANDO
KATHARINA HELLER
Corporate Communications
katharina.heller@zalando.de 
+49 176 1275 9514