Principal Software Engineer - Zalando Payments (all genders)

THE ROLE & THE TEAM Reporting directly to the Director, you will move beyond a single team’s scope to provide hands-on technical leadership for the entire department while also influencing engineering strategy, technical standards, and culture at the organizational level. You will be responsible for the architecture of the systems built within this area, serving as a key partner for Product and Engineering Management to ensure technology enables departmental objectives and business value. You will play a pivotal role in driving project delivery with an "agent-augmented delivery" concept, shaping how our engineering teams integrate autonomous agents into the software development lifecycle. As a Principal Software Engineer, you own and drive technical design creation for mid-to-large scale projects, factoring in scale, reliability, and architectural constraints. You are a proactive member of the Principal Engineering Community, leveraging insights from across Zalando to set technical direction and raise the bar for engineering excellence within your department.

WHAT WE’D LOVE YOU TO DO (AND LOVE DOING)Own technical design and end-to-end delivery of departmental projects. Drive the creation of robust technical designs for mid-to-large scale initiatives and maintain direct ownership of the implementation phase, taking an active, hands-on part in the development bearing sometimes full responsibility for implementation and delivery of robust, high-quality solutions across the entire project lifecycle.

Partner with leadership to drive hands-on product solutions. Act as the primary technical point of