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 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...
Over the last few years, Duolingo has expanded beyond language learning into entirely new subjects: Math, Music, and Chess. These products reach millions of daily active users, are growing quickly, and represent a CEO-level bet that Duolingo can become a platform for learning anything.
We're looking for a Senior Director of Engineering to co- lead our newest subjects, 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.
This role is based in our New York, NY office on a hybrid (4+1) work schedule.
🧠 You will...
• Drive the product and technical strategy across 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 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.
✅ You have...
• Experience leading consumer product engineering organizations (40+ engineers), ideally across multiple high growth product experiences.
• Pr