Our mission at Duolingo is to develop the best education in the world and make it universally available. It’s a big mission, and even though we've made a lot of headway, we still have work to do — and that’s where you come in!
Duolingo’s designers care about creating high-quality experiences that look and feel fun. From animators to writers, product designers to researchers, Design brings purpose, feeling, and delight to every interaction with our brand, inside the app and out. As a designer, you’ll join a culture of creativity and craft, where we have a high bar for excellence and an endless curiosity about how to bring more unexpected quirk and fun to the pursuit of learning.
Join us in our mission to develop education for our half a billion (and growing!) learners around the world.
About the role...
This role reports to a Design Studio Manager as a member of the Design team, the instrumental creative partner in most projects at Duolingo—from our mobile app and website to branded environment builds and Super Bowl ads. We take pride in crafting a user-friendly (and fun) experience for everyone, and your work will play a meaningful role in helping us achieve our mission and take our brand further.
🧠 You will...
- Concept and compose engaging character and scene illustrations
- Work in a highly collaborative fashion with the Design and partner teams
- Create new and memorable characters and enhance existing ones
- Consider the user experience surrounding the artwork you create
- Create artwork for social media, marketing campaigns, and workplace experience
✅ You have...
- An online portfolio with illustration samples
- Skill and proficiency illustrating with Figma
- Illustration experience in a tech, agency, or editorial role
- Experience illustrating for animation
- The ability to juggle multiple projects in parallel from concept to completion
- The ability to relocate to Pittsburgh, PA or Detroit, MI
⭐ Exceptional candidates will have...
- 1+ years of experience working at a high-paced tech start-up
- Experience with product design or animation (or both)
The offered salary is dependent upon several factors, including work experience, skills, and internal peer comparisons. The posted range is subject to change in the future. For this role, base salary is supplemented by equity compensation. We encourage you to talk with your recruiter for more information related to compensation for this role!
Benefits: Take a peek at how we care for our employees' holistic well-being with our benefits here.
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Accommodations: 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].
Equal Employment Opportunity: 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.
Fraud Warning: Unfortunately, there is a rise in scammers pretending to be real Duolingo employees. Duolingo and our employees will never ask for your Social Security number, bank details, or passport info, and we’ll never ask you to deposit a check, purchase equipment, or exchange money during the interview process. Real Duolingo employees always use an email that ends in @duolingo.com or @recruiting.duolingo.com. Stay alert and double-check these details before sharing any information.
By applying for this position your data will be processed as per the Duolingo Applicant Privacy Notice.
Skills Required
- Online portfolio with illustration samples
- Skill and proficiency illustrating with Figma
- Illustration experience in a technology, agency, or editorial role
- Experience illustrating for animation
- Ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously from concept to completion
- Ability to relocate to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, or Detroit, Michigan
- At least one year of experience working at a high-paced technology startup
- Experience with product design or animation
Duolingo Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Duolingo and has not been reviewed or approved by Duolingo.
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Fair & Transparent Compensation — Pay is considered competitive for core engineering and product roles, with required jurisdictions showing posted ranges and immigration filings implying a strong base-salary floor. Public compensation snapshots indicate senior packages can scale higher, supporting a clear, market-aligned structure.
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Healthcare Strength — Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage is paired with mental-health resources and fertility support as core offerings. Coverage for dependents and strong wellness benefits are consistently highlighted.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — About 20 days of PTO plus a two‑week company winter break and paid holidays provide substantial time away. A formal sabbatical at 10 years further expands long‑term recharge options.
Duolingo Insights
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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