Senior Engineering Manager, Retention

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 finding innovative solutions to complex technical problems, running countless experiments (300+ at a time!) with our massive user base to make data-driven decisions, and educating our users and employees alike. You’ll have limitless learning opportunities, mentorship and collaboration with world-class minds, and a variety of projects with large scopes — while doing work that’s both fun and meaningful. 

Join our life-changing mission to develop education for our half a billion (and growing!) learners around the world.

  As a team lead, you will...

• Form a dynamic duo with your product counterpart to co-lead a cross-functional team. Teams at Duolingo operate with a high degree of autonomy and collaboration. What this means: product, design, and engineering in the same room, coming up with solutions together, instead of product specs landing on engineers’ desks fully formed. If a team needs other roles to do their best work (data scientists, user researchers), we embed them on the team. 
• Provide both technical and product perspectives on new product ideas to ensure we find the fastest way to test a hypothesis. Rather than MVPs, we launch focused V1s. We keep them lean and double down on what works.
• Own the planning, execution, and success of projects that directly improve our top-line business metrics like daily active users, and identify which metrics to optimize for at the team level.
• Set clear expectations around engineering quality and promote practices that enhance code quality, scalability, and maintainability. Make sure tech specs are written and of high quality.
• Identify best practices, tools, and services that allow us to ship faster and keep our habit-building features as reliable as they can be, while also increasing the team’s velocity and cutting the right corners when it makes sense. 

As a role manager, you will...

• Develop your team, deeply understanding each engineer’s strengths and career goals, and proactively providing mentorship and stretch opportunities to help them grow their impact.
• Set clear expectations and hold a high bar for performance, regularly providing candid feedback, addressing challenges decisively, and maintaining a supportive environment where engineers feel valued, engaged, and empowered.
• Provide clarity and alignment, transparently communicating the “why” behind decisions, thoughtfully guiding your team through changes, and ensuring everyone understands their role in achieving team and company goals.
• Invest in your own leadership growth by participating in Duolingo’s Role Manager Program, peer coaching circles, the Growth Engineering Leads assembly, and ongoing development opportunities to continuously elevate your impact as a leader.