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...
We’re hiring a Staff Program Manager to lead complex, multi-quarter programs that cut across teams and functions at Duolingo. You’ll operate with significant autonomy to turn strategy into clear, scalable execution, align senior stakeholders, and build the systems that help teams ship impactful work on time. You will design plans, manage dependencies, surface and resolve risks early, and continuously improve our processes so we can move fast without sacrificing quality. This role is ideal for a program leader who brings crisp structure to ambiguity and elevates how cross-functional work gets done at scale. This position will be based in New York City, with 10–15% travel for shoots, partner meetings, and company events. You will also manage and develop a bench of freelance program managers who can help scale your impact.
🧠 You will...
- Lead end-to-end planning and execution of multiple complex, cross-functional programs from inception through launch, reporting and retro. You’ll help define scope, milestones, owners, success metrics, and decision logs.
- Build and maintain integrated program plans and timelines; proactively identify risks, manage dependencies, and drive mitigation plans to protect delivery and quality.
- Run effective operating rituals (kickoffs, status, reviews, exec updates, retros) that drive decisions, surface blockers, and create clear next steps for all partners.
- Align stakeholders across internal teams (e.g., Product, Engineering, Creative, Design, Analytics, Legal, and external partners and agencies) around goals, scope, and trade‑offs; communicate crisp status and recommendations to leadership.
- Create and improve lightweight processes, templates, and tools that teams actually adopt—raising the bar on documentation, visibility, and execution at scale.
- Track performance against program goals; partner with analytics/insights to synthesize learnings and feed them into future planning and operating models.
- Coach teams on program management best practices and uplevel execution across adjacent workstreams, even when not directly owning them.
- Manage and hire a bench of freelance program managers—scoping work, setting standards, and ensuring seamless integration with internal teams.
- Partner closely with Brand/Marketing to orchestrate multi‑workstream campaign operations without dulling creativity—coordinating cross‑channel deliverables and external partners to hit dates and quality bars.
✅ You have...
- 10+ years of experience in program/project management leading high-impact, cross-functional programs end-to-end in consumer tech or a comparable fast-paced environment, including multi-workstream initiatives with senior stakeholders.
- Proven mastery of integrated campaign planning and timelining; strong ability to manage multiple concurrent programs, dependencies, and change with clarity and calm.
- Excellent communication and facilitation skills; you simplify complexity, drive decisions, and influence across levels without authority.
- Demonstrated strength creating structure in ambiguity and designing systems/rituals that scale execution without unnecessary overhead.
- Data‑informed mindset; you define success metrics and use results to shape next steps and recommendations.
- Deep proficiency with project/task management and tools (e.g., Asana, Jira, Google Workspace) and a documentation‑first approach.
- Experience orchestrating cross-channel marketing or product launch workflows in partnership with Brand/Creative and external partners; comfort navigating trade-offs to protect quality and timelines.
- Ability to work from New York City, with willingness to travel 10–15% for shoots and partner meetings.
- Experience leading contractors or freelancers and holding external partners to clear scopes, timelines, budgets, and quality bars.
⭐ Exceptional candidates will have...
- People management experience, including hiring, developing, and performance-managing program managers (FTE or blended FTE/freelance teams) and building team-wide standards and career growth.
- Experience coordinating multi-market or multi-team launches with localization and/or external partner coordination.
- A track record building lightweight decision frameworks, retro processes, and operating cadences that stick across teams.
- Background working across multiple tracks of program management (e.g., Product, Design, Content/Localization, or Marketing) and connecting them into a coherent portfolio.
- Depth managing agencies and a freelance bench for integrated brand campaigns.
- Experience upleveling adjacent workstreams through coaching, templates, and tooling—improving execution beyond directly owned programs.
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
- 10+ years of program/project management leading high-impact, cross-functional programs end-to-end in consumer tech or comparable fast-paced environment.
- Proven mastery of integrated campaign planning and timelining; ability to manage multiple concurrent programs and dependencies.
- Excellent communication and facilitation skills; ability to simplify complexity and influence across levels without authority.
- Demonstrated ability to create structure in ambiguity and design systems and rituals that scale execution.
- Data-informed mindset; define success metrics and use results to shape recommendations and next steps.
- Deep proficiency with project/task management tools (e.g., Asana, Jira, Google Workspace) and a documentation-first approach.
- Experience orchestrating cross-channel marketing or product launch workflows in partnership with Brand/Creative and external partners.
- Ability to work from New York City.
- Willingness to travel 10-15% for shoots, partner meetings, and company events.
- Experience leading contractors or freelancers and holding external partners to clear scopes, timelines, budgets, and quality bars.
- People management experience, including hiring, developing, and performance-managing program managers (FTE or blended FTE/freelance teams).
- Experience coordinating multi-market or multi-team launches with localization and external partner coordination.
- Track record building lightweight decision frameworks, retro processes, and operating cadences that stick across teams.
- Background working across multiple tracks of program management and connecting them into a coherent portfolio.
- Depth managing agencies and a freelance bench for integrated brand campaigns.
- Experience upleveling adjacent workstreams through coaching, templates, and tooling.
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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