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 a Senior Engineering Manager at Duolingo, you will have the opportunity to grow as both a software engineer and an engineering leader. In this role, you’ll join Duolingo’s rapidly growing engineering organization to lead mission-critical projects from end to end, contribute to product strategy, and lead a team of world-class engineers.
Listen to why Basim Baig, one of our Senior Engineering Managers, loves Pittsburgh!
Below you can find more information about the teams we're hiring for:
Growth Area:
- The Growth Area focuses on attracting new users, retaining current users, and bringing users back to Duolingo. More users = more data (so we can teach better) and more paid subscribers (so we can invest in making the app even better, and keep the lights on!). Our area’s goal is to make Duolingo so fun and delightful that our learners stick around to make real progress and tell their friends all about it!
Infrastructure Platform Area:
- As an engineering manager on the Observability team at Duolingo, you'll lead a team of engineers building the technology that provides critical insights into how our software is performing. Your team will be instrumental in developing the tools and systems that ensure Duolingo remains reliable, scalable, and consistently delivers a high-quality experience for millions of learners globally.
DET Infrastructure Team:
- The DET Infrastructure team builds and maintains the infrastructure and developer tools for the Duolingo English Test, an online English proficiency exam that is accessible, affordable, and accepted by 5000+ universities. You will play a key role in keeping the DET a fast, secure, and delightful experience as it continues to scale.
Learning R&D Area:
- The Learning R&D Area works on improving the learning experience of our users with new bets, technologies, and features that fill the learning gaps in our product. As an engineering manager on the Video Call team, you'll lead a team of engineers building an exciting new feature that allows learners to have interactive conversations with a beloved Duolingo character, Lily.
You will...
- Lead and develop a team of software engineers, including task planning, technical leadership, and career development of your reports.
- Own the overall planning, execution, and success of projects that directly improve our top-line business metrics.
- Lead the development of new features and/or microservices in an innovative and fast-paced environment.
- Collaborate with product teams across the company to find new imaginative opportunities to increase company business metrics, like DAUs, revenue, retention and app performance.
- Identify best practices and tools to maximize our ability to build and maintain features and services.
You have...
- Experience in guiding a software engineering team and setting technical direction.
- Experience in leading cross-functional software engineering projects.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills.
- B.A./B.S. in Computer Science or a related field
Exceptional candidates will have...
- Experience in fast-growing, consumer-facing, data-driven startups, ideally mobile app-based.
- Master's degree or PhD in Computer Science or a related field.
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 your recruiter.
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.
We post a multi-level salary range for all of our roles.
This is not inclusive of the rest of our awesome portfolio that includes equity compensation and world-class benefits. Our salary ranges are the same for all US locations. Your recruiter can share more details about the range for a specific level during the hiring process. The actual salary within the range is determined by many factors including but not limited to, skills, experience, education, and internal equity.
Salary Range:
$144,500—$294,000 USD
Top Skills
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)!