Welcome to your Zalando

What kind of career experience would make you feel fulfilled? At Zalando, we’re building a workplace where employees can thrive together as they create fulfilling careers. A place where you can unlock your professional and personal potential, feel trusted to take on challenges, and be supported by collaborative, high-performing colleagues who always have your back.

Zalando at a glance

around 15,000

Employees

> 140

Nationalities

around 50m

Active Customers

> 150

Registered Office dogs

At Zalando, we bring together a diverse group of people to create an incredible, high-energy mix of ideas and experiences. But there is one thing we all have in common: we all use Zalando’s Founding Mindset as a guide for how we work. An integral part of our strategy, this Founding Mindset captures the four qualities that differentiate our approach: Customer Focus, Entrepreneurial Mindset, Speed, and Empowerment.

Our Founding Mindset

Customer Focus

Multi-color Eye Icon — Always put yourself in our customer’s shoes:
Everything starts with the customer. We always ask: are we delivering our customer promises? Are we creating memorable moments?
Solve something that matters:
We start with an experience worth creating and then work backwards. To achieve desired outcomes, we focus on critical inputs that we can control.
Put purpose first, ego second:
We stay humble and trust that our personal success comes from making the best decisions for the customer.

Always put yourself in our customer’s shoes:
Everything starts with the customer. We always ask: are we delivering our customer promises? Are we creating memorable moments?
Solve something that matters:
We start with an experience worth creating and then work backwards. To achieve desired outcomes, we focus on critical inputs that we can control.
Put purpose first, ego second:
We stay humble and trust that our personal success comes from making the best decisions for the customer.

Speed

Multi-color Flag Icon — Think big, act fast:
This is a race. Every day matters. We seize big opportunities without delay. We think “big” and get concrete. Quick, adaptive execution of an imperfect plan beats slow execution of the perfect plan.
Keep it simple, Sherlock:
Simple solutions scale quickly and are robust. Complicated ones are often a sign that we haven’t understood the problem yet.
Disagree, and commit:
Decisiveness breeds speed. To make the best decisions, we invite constructive, truth-seeking debate. To make them count, we seek commitment, not consensus. Until new information comes to light.

Think big, act fast:
This is a race. Every day matters. We seize big opportunities without delay. We think “big” and get concrete. Quick, adaptive execution of an imperfect plan beats slow execution of the perfect plan.
Keep it simple, Sherlock:
Simple solutions scale quickly and are robust. Complicated ones are often a sign that we haven’t understood the problem yet.
Disagree, and commit:
Decisiveness breeds speed. To make the best decisions, we invite constructive, truth-seeking debate. To make them count, we seek commitment, not consensus. Until new information comes to light.

Entrepreneurship

Start with “yes”:
Optimism creates opportunities. We focus more on what can be gained than what can be lost. And while we start with yes, we don’t necessarily end on yes. We separate real priorities from noise.
Act like an owner:
“Ownership” is about being responsible to our customers, partners and colleagues, not about being entitled. We own our destiny and are not stopped by circumstances: Zalando is what you make of it.
Fly high, dive deep:
We keep the big picture in mind. At the same time, we stay in touch with reality, always ready to dive into details when necessary without getting stuck there.
Don’t meet because it’s “Thursday”:
The measure of a good day is accomplishment, not activity. We challenge our routines. We never justify our approach with “that’s how things are done around here.

Empowerment

Make us better, not bigger:
We promote and hire to shape the company we want to become, not to fill the roles we need today. We create a company as diverse as the customers we serve.
Be your team’s biggest fan:
Magic happens in teams. To build strong teams, we give our best and hold each other to high standards. When colleagues do great things, we make sure to recognise those responsible.
Live high challenge, high support:
Feedback is a gift. We give and receive honest and timely feedback. At the same time, we provide each other with support, and we care about the person beyond their role.
Default to transparency:
We provide context and share information by default to enable informed decision making and to flag problems early. We don’t share when it does more harm than good.

Grow with us

You want to achieve your career ambitions. And we want to help you achieve them. So, from development plans and check-ins, to reviews and organisedorganized feedback, we’ll help you stay fully focused on your career goals – even if they change along the way.

Your career. Your way.

Every career journey is different. There’s no such thing as “one-size-fits-all”, and every experience you have is valuable. We believe that growth and fulfilment only comes with the freedom to be human. So whether you want to move up in your career, move across or try something totally different, we’re open to it.

Moving up

You focus on one area, boosting your scope and level of responsibility to become a true expert in what you do.

Moving across

You move into a related field — for example: from engineer to product manager — to learn new skills and try a different fit.

Changing lanes

You take a bolder step, moving to a totally unrelated field to expand your possibilities and start a new learning journey.

From the moment you start at Zalando, we’ll help you work out what resources you need to grow and learn. Use our extensive training platform and learning opportunities to create a career that excites you.

Training: Learning modules to support your personal and professional development.

Mentorship: An experienced guide to help you reflect, grow your skills and spot opportunities.

Coaching: 1:1 sessions and group coaching to empower your career decisions.

Leadership Development: Customised programs to share experiences and get feedback.

Learning Opportunities

Our Story

From a Berlin-based startup selling flip-flops to the leading fashion and lifestyle destination in Europe, we’ve got quite the story to tell.

We opened our first Logistics Center in Erfurt.
A Zalando pop-up store during one of the first years of operation in the Netherlands
We grew to over 10,000 employees working at Zalando.
Zalando’s 10th anniversary — and we celebrated in style.
We moved into BHQ (our main Headquarters building in Berlin) offering a fluid space of collaboration and teamwork.
Our new sustainability strategy, do.MORE was created, aiming for a net-positive impact for people and the planet.
Zalando employees spent over 879 hours on charitable initiatives outside work.
We unveiled our Diversity & Inclusion Strategy: do.BETTER.
We launched the first adaptive wear collection that caters to the needs of people with temporary or permanent impairments.
Zalando acquired a majority stake in Highsnobiety.
Zalando’s 15th anniversary — and we celebrated in style, again.
Our Berlin campus grew with the BHW office tower and its stunning 360° views
Over 100 Zalando colleagues volunteered for 3 days at the Special Olympics in Berlin
Zalando Visionary Award launched at Copenhagen Fashion Week
We introduced Stories, a new feature that sets the tone in fashion and culture
We launched a virtual fitting room pilot to millions of customers