Principal Software Engineer - Zalando Payments

Join Zalando Payments as a Principal Software Engineer, leading technical design and delivery for departmental projects while influencing engineering strategy and culture. 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.

• •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 contact for Product and Engineering Management, translating departmental objectives into concrete, deliverable software solutions through active participation in the development lifecycle.
• •Execute through high-impact, hands-on engineering.
• •Tackle the toughest engineering problems via significant code contributions, prototyping, and deep-dive troubleshooting to de-risk complex product features and maintain codebase mastery.
• •Lead "agent-augmented delivery" through practical implementation, ensuring the successful integration of autonomous agents and AI-assisted workflows directly into our engineering teams' daily delivery cycles.
• •Strengthen departmental expertise through coaching and paired delivery.
• •Onboard and mentor engineers by working alongside them on critical paths, acting as a Talent Champion while ensuring technical excellence in shared codebases.
• •Drive operational excellence through active systems improvement.
• •Proactively lead improvements in systems and processes, moving beyond reviews to implement enhancements that bolster production readiness and architectural scalability.
• •Drive cross-departmental and organizational initiatives: Collaborate with other Principal Engineers and leadership to shape technical strategy, standards, and engineering culture at the organizational level.