Our mission at Duolingo is to develop the best education in the world and make it universally available. It’s a big mission, and that’s where you come in!
At Duolingo, you’ll join a team that cares about educating our users, experimenting with big ideas, making fact-based decisions, and finding innovative solutions to complex problems. You’ll have limitless learning opportunities and daily collaborations with world-class minds — while doing work that’s both meaningful and fun.
Join our life-changing mission to develop education for our half a billion (and growing!) learners around the world.
Read our blog to learn more.
About the role...
As Director of Learning Design for New Subjects, you will set the pedagogical vision and execution strategy for Duolingo’s Math, Music, and Chess products — driving learning impact, curriculum quality, and innovation at global scale. You’ll lead a team of multi-disciplinary learning designers, and partner with product leadership to ship delightful, effective learning in the Duolingo style. This job is based in either Pittsburgh or New York.
You will...
- Ship effective learning at scale: partner with Product, Design, and Engineering to translate pedagogy into in‑app experiences that are fun and motivating
- Lead and develop a world‑class team of learning designers, leveling up their craft, velocity, and effectiveness
- Drive an experiment‑led practice: help design outcome‑focused A/B tests, align on success metrics, and assist with analyzing learning and engagement impact
- Establish content quality systems (guidelines, rubrics, review workflows) that ensure consistency and a high-quality bar across subjects
- Lead through example by using AI to improve your craft, and encouraging your team to do the same
- Explore the future of New Subjects: develop and validate roadmaps for new skills, modes, and curricula that extend Duolingo’s impact
You have...
- Depth in learning design: extensive experience (typically 10+ years) designing curricula or learning products, with proven impact at consumer scale
- People leadership: 5+ years leading multi‑disciplinary teams; experience managing managers and establishing high‑bar standards
- Product sense: an instinct for creating simple, delightful, and intuitive user experiences
- Operational rigor: proficiency in content operations, QA processes, and tooling to maintain quality at scale
- Outstanding communication: clear, kind, and persuasive across audiences, including executive and cross‑functional
Exceptional candidates will have...
- Graduate degree in Learning Science, Education, Cognitive Science, HCI, or a relevant subject field (e.g., Mathematics Education, Music Theory/Ed, Game‑based Learning)
- A track record of partnering with product, design, and engineering to ship lovable, effective features on mobile
We post a multi-level salary range for all of our roles.
This is not inclusive of the rest of our awesome portfolio that includes equity compensation and world-class benefits. Our salary ranges are the same for all US locations. Your recruiter can share more details about the range for a specific level during the hiring process. The actual salary within the range is determined by many factors including but not limited to, skills, experience, education, and internal equity.
Take a peek at how we care for our employees' holistic well-being with our benefits here.
We will do everything we can within reason to make sure that your interview takes place in an environment that fairly and accurately assesses your skills. If you need assistance or accommodation, please contact [email protected].
Duolingo is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.
By applying for this position your data will be processed as per the Duolingo Applicant Privacy Notice.
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Top Skills
What We Do
Duolingo is a language-learning education platform that offers 98 total courses across nearly 40 distinct languages.
Duolingo is the world’s most popular way to learn a language. Our mission is to develop the best education in the world and make it universally available. Some of our products include:
1. Duolingo: The free, fun, and effective way to learn a language!
2. DET (Duolingo English Test): A modern language proficiency tool designed for today's international students and institutions. It offers an English proficiency score, video interview, and writing sample in an accessible, efficient, and secure testing experience.
3. Duolingo Math: An app that can make math be fun. For everyone. Students can focus on elementary math, which covers classroom topics, or adults can focus on brain training, which strengthens mental math skills and covers more advanced topics.
4. Duolingo ABC: An educational learning app that offers immersive lessons to teach preschool to second grade kids reading fundamentals.
Founded in 2011 by Luis von Ahn and Severin Hacker, Duolingo is the most downloaded education app in the history of the App Store and in 2019 became the top-grossing education app worldwide. The app has been awarded Apple's iPhone App of the Year and Android's Best of the Best.
Learning a new language used to be expensive; we believe it should be free. Over 1.2 billion people are learning a second language and most of them are learning English to improve their lives.
Learning a new language is hard; we believe it can be fun. We use bite-sized lessons that feel like playing a game to keep our learners motivated.
With over 500 million learners we have unprecedented data insights on how people learn. Our teams of language learning scientists, machine learning engineers, and AI experts use this data to constantly improve our effectiveness. We’re building a future in which the highest-quality education is accessible to all.
Duolingo has been named:
2022 Fast Company’s Best Workplaces for Innovators
2022 Fast Company 10 Most Innovative Education Company
2021 Forbes Best Startup Employers
2020, 2018, 2017, 2013 Most Innovative Company by Fast Company
2020 Best Machine Learning Startups for by Glassdoor
2018 Inc. Best Places to Work
2018 Entrepreneur Top Company Culture List
University Program Awards:
2022 Handshake Early Talent Award
2022 Untapped Top Internship Programs
2022 OneReq Internship Program Trailblazer Award
Why Work With Us
Our global team works together to make language learning fun, free, and effective for anyone who wants to learn, wherever they are. Best of all, you get to work alongside Duo (literally)!
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