Inside the heart of our international community

Dublin-based Senior Product Designer, Shauna Moggan, reflects on her warm welcome to our Profiles and Personalization team.

Everything we do at Zalando starts and ends with human connection — whether that’s delivering on the feedback of our customers, practicing rituals to encourage and support our teammates, or coming together with the wider community for our monthly all-hands meetup. As Senior Product Designer, Shauna Moggan, found out, it’s a special kind of authenticity that has the warmth to diminish the pressure of a rigorous interview process, and the camaraderie to close the physical distance between our international offices.

After participating in our Hiring Sprint — our recruitment fast-track that fits the entire interview process into one day — Shauna landed softly into the Irish wing of Zalando’s Dublin- and Berlin-based Profiles and Personalization team, which translates deep customer understanding into inspiring personalized shopping experiences. She is currently bringing her design expertise to all of the personalized content that sits inside the heart icon on our website.

Curious how it feels to join our international community? Read on to learn about Shauna’s experience.

Has working at Zalando matched your expectations?

I expected to learn and grow; that has certainly been matched. The fact that the community is so big provides so many learning opportunities. For example, I really like the access that we have to specialist experts — like those in the Voice of Customers research team, Design Systems and Content Design teams. We can take our problems to collaborative sessions and work together on a solution or the next steps. That’s been a really great experience!

What have you been working on since you joined?

I joined the Profiles and Personalization team as a Senior Product Designer. The team name intrigued me. It has a broad scope, covering things like search and browse, the user profile, and recommendations. It is also responsible for the catalog experience in the fashion store. Each of our designers is focused on different parts of the puzzle. The area for which I’m currently responsible is the wardrobe: everything inside of the heart icon on the website and on the app, such as liked and owned items.

My onboarding onto project work made a lot of sense. In the initial projects, the topics were related and designs were somewhat developed. That allowed me to focus mainly on getting familiar with the role of design during the delivery phase. Other projects involved collaborating with different teams across the business. This meant that I learned by doing (the best way!) while expanding my network in Zalando and building confidence in the process.

“I was blown away by the design community — both by the talent and how interesting everyone is.”

Tell us a bit about your team.

We are a growing team of soon to be eight Product Designers, spread across Dublin and Berlin. I’m so lucky to be a part of this team; my colleagues are all super talented, bringing a variety of skills and experience to the table. I really enjoy going into our Dublin office a couple of days a week. One of my favorite things about it is the music room kitted out with instruments — the makings of a band perhaps?!

Did anything surprise you about Zalando?

I was blown away by the design community at Zalando — both by the talent and how interesting everyone is. When I started, my manager gave me a list of names that I should reach out to for a casual chat to introduce ourselves and find out more about their area of focus. The diverse backgrounds and broad range of hobbies among those I met were impressive!

Even though our community is pretty large (around 200 people), my experiences of the online all-hands Campfire meeting felt intimate, rather than intimidating. Everyone was really welcoming, celebrating each other’s achievements, like work anniversaries, for instance. This culture spreads into our chat channel too. I feel proud to be a part of such a smart and supportive team.

Interested in joining our design community? Take a look at our current openings.