Backend Engineering Internship -Partner Tech

THE ROLE & THE TEAM

The Partner Tech (PT) team is at the heart of Zalando’s partner business, making a huge impact on Zalando's business, generating 34% of our total revenue. Our mission is to empower partners, from multi-million euro fashion brands to physical retail stores, by building a robust, scalable and intuitive platform. This platform seamlessly connects them with 50 million customers, enabling them to deliver high-quality, compliant and relevant assortments. We handle millions of transactions and product listings, developing innovative solutions that fuel growth. We are a dedicated, collaborative team driven by the desire to build the best partner platform.

We are looking for two backend engineering interns to join our PT Offers and PT Processing Orders engineering teams.

PT Offers Team:

As a backend engineering intern on our Partner Tech Offers team, you’ll gain hands-on experience and make an impact every day building a partner-facing platform that simplifies integration with Zalando’s systems. You’ll contribute to a critical part of our business, helping partners seamlessly manage their inventory, stocks, and prices through performant APIs and intuitive UIs, ensuring compliance with EU regulations while presenting attractive offers to our customers. You’ll work alongside experienced software engineers, product managers, and designers to develop innovative solutions for partners and internal stakeholders. With our system processing over 1 billion inventory data points daily, you’ll gain valuable insights in designing and maintaining scalable, reliable systems. Join us on this exciting journey and kickstart your career in backend engineering!

PT Processing Orders Team:

As a backend engineering intern on the Partner Orders Processing team, you'll gain hands-on experience in managing the complete order lifecycle for Zalando's partners. With roughly 34% of overall Zalando volume and millions of orders flowing through our systems each month, you'll contribute to processing newly created orders and exporting them to partners and integrators through performant APIs. You'll work to ensure partners are able to fulfill their orders and communicate back their order updates through our APIs and event-based systems. Your work will directly impact the success of our partners and contribute to the smooth operation of a high-volume, critical system. Join us on this exciting journey and kickstart your career in backend engineering!

WHAT WE’D LOVE YOU TO DO (AND LOVE DOING)

• Be a problem solver. You enjoy tackling challenges, and proactively exploring solutions to better understand and address them.

• Be a quick learner. Gradually become proficient in the technologies and workflows used by the team, gaining hands-on experience in developing, testing and releasing a software feature.

• Be a team player. You will work closely with engineers and cross-functional teams, such as product, design, and data, while fostering a supportive and inclusive team culture. By contributing ideas, seeking feedback, and lending a hand to others, you’ll help the team reach its goals and develop alongside your peers.

• Understand the big picture. Go beyond coding. You will gain an understanding of how your team’s work contributes to the broader goals of Partner Tech and Zalando, helping you connect technical decisions to their business impact.

WE’D LOVE TO MEET YOU IF

• Education: Recent graduate or final year student of Computer Science or Information Technology (Bachelor or Master).

• Solid technical foundation: You have a good understanding of algorithms, data structures, and backend fundamentals like API design and database schemas.

  • Bonus: Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines, containerization, or cloud platforms (AWS, GCP).

• Coding proficiency & adaptability: You are comfortable coding in at least one major backend language (Python, Java, Node.js, etc.) and eager to learn Scala or Kotlin if not already familiar. Prior experience with JVM-based languages (Java, Scala, Kotlin, etc.) is a plus.

• Focus on delivering value: You are driven by solving real problems, not just writing code. You view technology as a tool and aren't afraid to step outside your core stack to deliver impact.

• Commitment to learning: You value continuous growth, proactively seek feedback, and are eager to expand your technical skills independently with guidance from the team.

• Effective communication: You can clearly articulate ideas, collaborate with teammates, and document your work effectively in English.

This role is based in our Helsinki office, where you’ll collaborate in person with your team a few days each week. Please note that we cannot provide relocation or residence permit support for this internship and therefore, all applicants must have the pre-existing right to work in Finland to work full-time for the duration of the program.

OUR OFFER

• Paid internship starting in May 2026 with a duration of 4-5 months.

• Centrally located and accessible office in Kamppi, Helsinki city center, with diverse working and entertainment spaces and healthy snacks and drinks available.

• Hybrid work model of up to 60% remote work and flexible working times.

• 40% Zalando shopping discount for employees, and Edenred benefits for lunch, sports and culture, commuting and massage.

• Extensive occupational health care and child care benefits.

• Additional holidays and volunteering time off.

• Supportive and active international community of colleagues for onboarding, mentoring, continued learning and for having fun through diverse offering of meetups and events, knowledge guilds and Employee Resource Groups with open source commitment.

Learn all about Zalando and our values here: https://jobs.zalando.com/en/?gh_src=22377bdd1us. For more information about our office and teams in Helsinki, please visit: https://jobs.zalando.com/en/where-we-work/helsinki

Please note that all applications must be completed using the online form - we do not accept applications via email. If you are interested, please send us your application and CV before February 13th 2026.

INCLUSIVE BY DESIGN

At Zalando, our vision is to be the leading pan-European ecosystem for fashion and lifestyle e-commerce - one that is inclusive by design. We only assess candidates based on qualifications, merit, and business needs. We welcome applications from people of all gender identities, sexual orientations, personal expressions, racial identities, ethnicities, religious beliefs, and disability statuses. We only want to know why you’re great for this role, so please avoid including your picture, age, and marital status in your CV as well.

We want to provide you with a great candidate experience. Please feel free to inform us of any accommodations you may need, so we can best support and assist you throughout the hiring process.

do.BETTER - our diversity & inclusion strategy: https://jobs.zalando.com/en/our-culture/diversity-and-inclusion

Our employee resource groups: https://corporate.zalando.com/en/our-impact/our-employee-resource-groups