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.
🧠 You will...
- Lead the delivery of strategic, high-impact cross-functional initiatives from conceptualization to launch
- Lead complex, high-stakes technical programs within the Duolingo English Test (DET) domain, partnering with engineering, product, data science, legal, security, and external stakeholders to translate regulatory, compliance, and business requirements into clear technical plans and durable execution.
- Operate at the Staff level with significant autonomy, driving strategy across multiple workstreams, providing steady leadership through ambiguity and external scrutiny, and upleveling how DET programs are planned, communicated, and delivered.
- Partner with functions across the company—such as engineering, QA, product management, and executive leadership—to ensure communication and alignment across teams and to further collaboration across functions
- Leverage deep technical expertise to develop detailed plans with key milestones and goals, identify and mitigate risks, solve for dependencies, remove impediments, and ensure timely and smooth project launches
- Identify issues impacting delivery efficiency company-wide and quickly take action to resolve them, working collaboratively with leadership and other relevant partners
- Drive decisions when difficult tradeoffs must be made, including those with cross-organizational or company-level impact; serve as role model for navigating problems with analytical approach and calming demeanor
- Guide and train others on standard processes, scaling guidelines across teams, and improving how product and engineering organizations operate, even when you are not involved day to day.
✅ You have...
- Strong experience as TPM, Engineering Lead, or Manager
- B.S. or M.S. in Computer Science or equivalent degree or experience
- Experience working on commercial software products and their underlying infrastructure, with an understanding of client-service architecture
- Consistent track record of communicating technical issues effectively to technical and non-technical partners at different levels of the organization
- Proven ability to build and implement detailed plans accounting for ambiguity, dependencies, and technical complexity in an agile environment
- Flexibility to adjust plans based on new information without losing a beat and while keeping morale high
- Outstanding leadership and influence in a matrix environment, including influencing senior leaders without direct authority
- Ability to operate effectively even with only high-level direction, setting strategy and direction across multiple teams or workstreams
- Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, start-up environment
- Demonstrated self-direction, with a desire both to learn new techniques and guide others
- Ability to relocate to Pittsburgh, PA
⭐ Exceptional candidates will have...
- Experience with software engineering, systems engineering, or similar experience, in addition to project/program management experience
- Deep experience with AWS
- Experience working with teams and technical projects distributed across the globe
- Experience running projects that include machine learning and large datasets
- Experience articulating business questions and using available data to find answers that translate into business recommendations
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
- Strong experience as a technical program manager, engineering lead, or engineering manager
- Bachelor’s or master’s degree in Computer Science, or equivalent experience
- Experience working on commercial software products and underlying infrastructure
- Understanding of client-service architecture
- Track record of communicating technical issues effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders at all organizational levels
- Ability to create and implement detailed plans accounting for ambiguity, dependencies, and technical complexity in an agile environment
- Ability to adapt plans based on new information while maintaining team morale
- Leadership and influence in a matrixed environment, including influencing senior leaders without direct authority
- Ability to operate with high-level direction and set strategy across multiple teams or workstreams
- Ability to thrive in a fast-paced startup environment
- Self-direction and willingness to learn new techniques and guide others
- Ability to relocate to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
- Experience in software engineering, systems engineering, or a similar technical discipline in addition to program management
- Deep experience with AWS
- Experience working with globally distributed teams and technical projects
- Experience leading projects involving machine learning and large datasets
- Ability to articulate business questions, analyze available data, and develop business recommendations
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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