Senior Director of Engineering, Duolingo
New Subjects
$296-444k
+ Equity
4 days a week in office
Language education platform
Be an early applicant
Language education platform
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
$296-444k
+ Equity
4 days a week in office
1001+ employees
Company mission
To give everyone access to a private tutor experience through technology, making learning fun and providing universal access to language education.
Role
Who you are
- 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
What the job involves
- 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
- 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
Our take
Duolingo is a free to use language learning app, offering 100+ courses in more than 40 languages. It is the most downloaded education app in the history of the App Store and has previously been awarded Apple's iPhone App of the Year and Android's Best of the Best.
With over 500 million registered users, the company has unprecedented data insights on how people learn. Its team of language learning scientists, machine learning engineers, and AI experts use this data to constantly improve its effectiveness.
Alongside language courses, the company has created the Duolingo English Test which is an affordable and convenient language certification option accepted by more than 2,000 universities and institutions worldwide. Since its 2021 IPO, Duolingo has shown strong momentum. And regular changes to the app have brought increased user engagement, retention and stronger conversion.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Company
Funding (last 2 of 8 rounds)
Nov 2020
$35m
LATE VC
Apr 2020
$10m
LATE VC
Total funding: $183.3m
Company benefits
- Medical, dental, and vision for employees as well as eligible partners and dependents
- Mental health benefits such as therapy sessions and coaching to support you to be your best self
- Fertility benefits to support your family planning journey
- Fully paid parental and adoption leave
- Fully paid subscription to Care.com and paid backup days for dependents and your fur family
- 401(k) with generous match and immediate vesting
- 20 days of paid time off, with two additional weeks off for winter break
- First-time home buyer bonus (in Pittsburgh)
- Competitive salaries and equity
- Yearly stipend for professional development
- Transportation reimbursement for however you get to work
- Lunch prepared daily by our in-house chefs
- Annual international retreat for all full-time employees
- Monthly events celebrating our team and their amazing work
- On-site gym and massages
- Game room for taking brain breaks
Company HQ
East Liberty, Pittsburgh, PA
Leadership
Luis von Ahn
(CEO & Co-founder)Professor at Carnegie Mellon University and founder of CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA sold to Google.
Severin Hacker
(CTO & Co-founder)PhD in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University.
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