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...
As the manager and team lead of the new AI Tooling and Ecosystem Team, you will lead the development of the suite of tools and services that power Duolingo's use of AI in the product. You and your team will design systems for managing datasets, evaluating the performance of AI models, and building AI workflows. You will help shape how Duolingo builds features using AI, enabling teams to easily define quality metrics, combine human and AI feedback, and compare model performance. We're looking for an engineering manager who has experience building AI products or infrastructure and is excited to play a central role in shaping the future of AI at Duolingo!
🧠 You will...
- Drive development of tools and services that empower Duolingo's product teams to easily and effectively build AI-powered features and workflows.
- Manage our shared systems and workflows for AI-related datasets, prompts, and evaluations (both human and LLM-as-a-judge).
- Build processes that allow teams to define success criteria for their AI use-case, identify the most appropriate models, and construct feedback loops for prompt optimization.
- Streamline common AI development flows so that teams with varying levels of AI expertise can build out AI systems quickly.
- Collaborate closely with the AI Core Infrastructure Team to ensure that AI workflows are reliable, measurable, and cost efficient.
- Partner with AI, Product, Data Science, and Platform leaders to build out new AI tooling that supports common use-cases.
- Own multi‑quarter roadmaps and cross‑functional alignment that increase AI feature velocity and measurable product impact across Duolingo.
✅ You have...
- Experience leading, managing, and building a team of software and/or AI engineers, with demonstrated ability to hire, develop, and retain talent.
- A track record of building AI-related infrastructure or user-facing products powered by AI.
- Familiarity with AI evaluation methods, especially approaches that combine human and LLM-as-a-judge evaluations.
- Strong cross‑functional leadership and communication skills; proven ability to align AI, product, data science, and platform partners on strategy and execution.
- Comfort leading through ambiguity and shaping new ways of working in a fast‑evolving AI landscape.
- The ability to work from or relocate to Pittsburgh, PA or New York, NY.
⭐ Exceptional candidates will have...
- Hands‑on experience building evaluation systems and human‑in‑the‑loop data pipelines at scale.
- A track record of developing internal tools on a platform or infrastructure team, providing tools and services via easy-to-use APIs, MCPs, and web GUIs.
- Experience navigating build vs. buy decisions and shaping long-term roadmaps based on the needs of internal customers.
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
- Experience leading, managing, and building teams of software and/or AI engineers
- Demonstrated ability to hire, develop, and retain talent
- Track record of building AI-related infrastructure or user-facing products powered by AI
- Familiarity with AI evaluation methods, including human and LLM-as-a-judge evaluations
- Strong cross-functional leadership and communication skills
- Ability to align AI, product, data science, and platform partners on strategy and execution
- Comfort leading through ambiguity in a fast-evolving AI landscape
- Ability to work from or relocate to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, or New York, New York
- Hands-on experience building evaluation systems and human-in-the-loop data pipelines at scale
- Experience developing internal platform or infrastructure tools delivered through APIs, MCPs, and web GUIs
- Experience making build-versus-buy decisions and shaping long-term internal-customer roadmaps
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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