Zalando’s Quality Engineering Journey — From Monolith to Microservices

Zalando had to fight for survival.

Retail being one of the sectors with the highest competition, players acting in that space have no choice but to reinvent themselves on a continuous basis.

Zalando started in 2008 just a couple of days before the financial crisis, rapidly expanding in countries the following years with its free shipping and 100 days return policy.

Its technology landscape started like many companies with a monolith architecture, but faced limitations from 2013 requiring them to change their software paradigm.

This article shares Zalando’s Quality Engineering transformation journey and the business and technology outcomes part of their today’s competitive advantage.

The initial architecture supports the business growth

Zalando started its business with a monolith architecture inside a monorepo that supported the business growth and scalability in multiple countries.

Zalando opened many countries with a constant rhythm, Austria in 2009, Netherlands and France in 2010, to multiple ones afterward.