Python Engineer

How do you make our customers happy?

By ensuring every product is in the right warehouse at precisely the right moment, ready to zip to any of our 13.7 million customers’ doorsteps. As a Software Engineer on our Stock Allocation team, you’ll build scalable solutions that optimize our logistics capabilities across the entire network. Your software solutions will help decide where millions of products should be – from BBQ tools to above-ground pools – optimizing for efficiency, speed, cost, and capacity. Can you code the logic that turns warehouse chaos into customer delight?

The biggest challenge

Solving a multi-dimensional puzzle where every tweak has ripple effects. When should delivery speed matter more than cost efficiency? Or the other way around? And how do you build systems flexible enough to handle Black Friday madness? Success requires production-ready code that processes millions of allocation decisions flawlessly. The real test: creating solutions robust enough for operations teams to trust, yet agile enough to adapt when priorities shift mid-sprint.

What you'll do as Python Engineer

As part of a multidisciplinary product team, you’ll transform business logic and data science models into production-grade solutions. Your toolkit includes Python for scalable data pipelines and allocation calculations, as well as Kotlin, to share results with retailers, sellers, and internal systems. You’ll work in a cross-functional setup where data scientists prototype models, logistics engineers define constraints, and you make it all production-ready. On some days, you’ll optimize allocation algorithms that process terabytes of data. Other days you’ll enhance our internal dashboard that allows last-minute manual interventions.

This isn’t a role where requirements land in your inbox fully formed. You’ll collaborate closely with stakeholders from buying, delivery, and logistics operations to understand the real-world impact of allocation decisions. In this fast-changing environment, your ability to communicate clearly and adapt quickly matters as much as your coding skills.

Your key responsibilities:

• Build reliable, scalable software that turns allocation logic into production systems
• Develop Python data pipelines that process millions of stock allocation decisions
• Create Kotlin/Java services that expose allocation results across our platform
• Maintain and enhance dashboards for manual interventions
• Collaborate with data scientists to productionize models
• Work with logistics engineers to implement business constraints
• Optimize for both computational efficiency and business impact

Why you can make a difference

You combine strong Python expertise with solid system design skills and hands-on experience with (most of) our tech stack. You’re fluent in Apache Airflow and comfortable working in Google Cloud, leveraging BigQuery for data processing and CloudSQL for operational data. You understand how to transform prototypes into maintainable production code that operations teams can depend on, using tools such as Prometheus, Kibana, and Grafana to ensure reliability.

Kotlin/Java experience is welcome. Experience with Kubernetes and Postgres? Even better – but these are not deal-breakers. What’s more important is that you thrive in environments where priorities can shift rapidly and quick decisions matter. A logistics background would be helpful, but curiosity about the domain, an eagerness to learn, and the drive to collaborate across disciplines count for more.

Who might not enjoy this role?

• Ivory tower architect – You prefer designing theoretically perfect systems to building practical solutions
• Silo dweller – Teaming up with data scientists and logistics engineers? Can't they just write better specs?
• Stability seeker – Shifting priorities make you nervous; you need requirements carved in stone before writing a single line of code

Who will thrive in this role?

• Production perfectionist – You don't just write code that works - you build systems that scale and monitor themselves
• Cross-functional athlete – You seamlessly translate between data science dreams and business realities, always mindful of operational constraints
• Impact optimizer – You connect the dots between code quality and customer satisfaction with a laser focus on the big picture

Where you'll work

You’ll join the Stock Allocation team, part of the Capacity Steering product group at the heart of bol’s logistics innovation prowess. Our team of three Software Engineers, three Data Scientists, and several Logistics Process Engineers tackles one of e-commerce’s toughest challenges: optimizing inventory placement across a multi-warehouse network. We balance solving challenging technical problems with making an operational impact. We genuinely respect and appreciate each other’s company. Beyond work, that includes everything from Friday drinks to cycling outings and game nights. Ready to code the algorithms that keep our warehouses humming and customers smiling? Show us how you’d solve our allocation puzzle!