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.
About the role...
Over the last few years, Duolingo has expanded beyond language learning into entirely new subjects: Math, Music, and Chess. These products reach millions of daily active users, are growing quickly, and represent a CEO-level bet that Duolingo can become a platform for learning anything.
We're looking for a Senior Director of Engineering to co- lead the New Subjects pillar, responsible for building and scaling products ranging from early stages through to some of the company’s fastest-growing initiatives.
This is a role for a builder. You'll make decisions about which subjects to invest in, how to allocate engineering resources across bets at different stages, where to continue investing and where to pivot.
You’ll partner closely with Product and Design to shape the future of the pillar while building the organization that delivers it.
This role is based in our New York, NY office on a hybrid (4+1) work schedule.
🧠 You will...
- Drive the product and technical strategy across Math, Music, and Chess, balancing short-term product impact with long-term strategic goals.
- Partner strategically with Product, Design, Learning and AI to evolve our strategy, including decisions on when and how to expand to additional subjects.
- Lead multiple engineering directors and their teams as they tackle some of the most interesting technical challenges in industry: AI-based content creation and tutoring at scale, neural bots, and Unity-based gameplay.
- Drive operational excellence across Duolingo’s engineering org, including reliability, performance, developer productivity, and efficient execution at scale.
- Contribute to Duolingo’s engineering hiring bar and talent systems, playing a central role in hiring decisions, leveling, and organizational design to maintain a high-performance, high-density team.
- Lead an organization that moves quickly, runs high-quality experiments, and translates product insights into measurable business impact.
- Build and develop a strong leadership bench capable of bringing ambitious new products to market.
✅ You have...
- Experience leading large-scale consumer product engineering organizations (100+ engineers), ideally across multiple high-growth product experiences.
- Product instincts and experience partnering closely with senior product leadership to define strategy, not just execute against it.
- A track record of driving measurable impact on business outcomes, including growing early product development through significant company scale.
- Experience building or scaling LLM-powered product features, with a strong interest in building engineering cultures that embrace AI-first ways of working.
- Deep experience building and scaling high-velocity, experiment-driven product organizations, leading through multiple layers of leadership (senior directors, directors, EMs).
- A track record of building high-performance, inclusive teams and making thoughtful, high-judgment talent decisions.
- Ability to influence senior executives and drive clarity in ambiguous, cross-functional situations.
- Ability to work from our New York, NY office on a 4+1 hybrid work schedule.
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!
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.
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.
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Skills Required
- Experience leading large-scale consumer product engineering organizations (100+ engineers).
- Experience leading across multiple high-growth product experiences (ideal).
- Product instincts and experience partnering with senior product leadership to define strategy.
- Track record of driving measurable impact on business outcomes and scaling early products through company growth.
- Experience building or scaling LLM-powered product features and embracing AI-first engineering practices.
- Deep experience building and scaling high-velocity, experiment-driven product organizations across multiple leadership layers.
- Track record of building high-performance, inclusive teams and making high-judgment talent decisions.
- Ability to influence senior executives and drive clarity in ambiguous, cross-functional situations.
- Ability to work from New York, NY office on a 4+1 hybrid work schedule.
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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