Siliconrepublic.com spoke to some of Zalando’s employees in Dublin to find out what it’s like to work for the online fashion platform.
German fashion e-commerce company Zalando has seen massive growth over the past year as online shopping soared throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.
In fact, the company recently reported that first-quarter sales rose to €2.24bn, following an incredibly strong performance throughout 2020.
As a reward for its 14,500 employees, Zalando announced earlier this month that it would give its workforce a collective break, with five days extra annual leave at the beginning of August.
Zalando has more than 42m active customers around Europe and, while its headquarters are in Berlin, the company has a growing hub in Dublin that was set up in 2015.
Siliconrepublic.com headed down to the company’s new office at Windmill Lane to speak to some of its employees and find out what it’s like to work there.
Owen Phelan, Zalando Ireland’s head of engineering, said most people in the Dublin office are working on “some of the most important business problems the company has”.
“The solutions that we’re building now are going to last us 10 years into the future, so the way it has benefitted me is giving access to those problems and working with teams here.”
Meanwhile, senior software engineer John Coleman said Zalando has exposed him to a wide range of experiences in distributed systems, customer data responsibilities and machine learning.
Outside of the technology aspect, software engineer Ed Bermejo spoke about the importance of being able to bring their authentic self to work. They said they asked about the dress code during their first interview with the company. “[They] said: Come as you are, wear what you love and that’s what I’ve been doing in Zalando all this time.”
For data scientist Eamonn Newman, it’s the small things that he likes about the company. “I really love the vibe in the office,” he said. “We work very collaboratively, working with diverse range of people. That for me is what’s really enjoyable.”
Updated 11.01am, 18 June 2021: This article has been updated to reflect the fact that Zalando now has 42m active customers.
