About this role
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 looking for a Regional People Lead to serve as both a senior People Business Partner and the operational owner for our growing EMEA presence. Based in London, you'll bridge global strategy and local execution: delivering sharp counsel to regional leaders while keeping compliance, operations, and the employee experience running seamlessly.
Navigating a mix of direct entities and PEO-supported markets, you're as comfortable handling multi-country compliance as you are advising leaders. Reporting to the Head of Talent Management and Rewards (TMR), you will lead and develop a People Operations Manager, champion the EMEA region in global planning, and ensure local nuance actively shapes our global strategy.
🧠 You will...
Strategic Partnership
• Serve as the senior People Partner to EMEA leaders, building deep business understanding and advising on org design, performance, team health, and growth.
• Lead engagement, inclusion, and talent planning initiatives across the region, and drive talent density in partnership with TA.
• Guide leaders and teams through organizational change, translating global OKRs and TMR programs into plans that fit regional context and surfacing gaps back to TMR.
• Own complex employee relations and higher-risk people matters across the region, including investigations, grievances, performance and disciplinary processes, and settlement agreements, applying employment-law judgment and knowing when to bring in Legal or the central team.
• Use people data and engagement insight to spot organizational health trends early and recommend action.
Regional Operations & Compliance
• Own regional People operations end to end, leading a People Operations Manager who delivers day-to-day execution across direct entities and PEO-supported markets, while staying close enough to the detail to catch compliance and payroll risk yourself.
• Work alongside the wider People team on our regional PEO/EOR relationship (currently Globalization Partners), including monthly payroll submissions across multiple calendars, employment changes, terminations, new-country implementation, and vendor management across PEO-supported markets.
• Support employment compliance across direct and PEO markets, including UK Right to Work, UK and German contract and employment-law requirements, a