Director of Engineering, Math

Duolingo, Inc; New York (NY); On-site; USD 244,000 - 366,000; Full time

Job summary

Duolingo, Inc in New York, NY is seeking a Director of Engineering to lead the expansion of their Math education product. You'll create and strategically manage resources while collaborating with Product and Design teams to drive innovation.

This hybrid role involves overseeing engineering leaders, ensuring operational excellence, and building inclusive, high-performing teams. Experience in consumer product engineering and AI-driven solutions is essential. Salary range is $244,000 — $366,000 USD.

Qualifications

• Experience leading consumer product engineering organizations (30+ engineers).
• Track record of driving measurable impact on business outcomes.
• Ability to influence senior executives and drive clarity in ambiguous situations.

Responsibilities

• Drive the product and technical strategy for Math.
• Partner with Product and Design to evolve strategy.
• Lead multiple fast-moving engineering teams.

Skills

Leadership in engineering

Product strategy development

Experience in AI-driven products

Inclusive team building

Cross-functional influence

Job description

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 Director of Engineering to help lead Math and scale our teaching method to Physics, Chemistry, and more.

This is a role for a builder. You’ll take on creating math education at scale, leveraging a world‑class engineering team and AI‑driven content generation system. You’ll make decisions about which school 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 product while building the organization that delivers it.

This role is based in our New York, NY office on a hybrid (4+1) work schedule.

• Drive the product and technical strategy for Math, 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 fast‑moving engineering leaders and their teams as they tackle some of the most interesting technical challenges in industry, including AI content generation and AI tutoring.
• 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.
• 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.

You have

• Experience leading consumer product engineering organizations (30+ engineers), ideally across multiple high‑growth product experiences.
• Product instincts and experience partnering closely with 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 new technologies.
• Deep experience building and scaling high‑velocity, experiment‑driven product organizations.
• 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.

Benefits

Take a peek at how we care for our employees' holistic well‑being with our benefits here.

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.

Salary

Salary Range:

$244,000 — $366,000 USD

AI in Hiring

Duolingo uses AI technology to assist in our hiring process. We want to be transparent about how we use this technology and your rights. We use Greenhouse Software’s Talent Matching feature to assist with reviewing applications for the skills and experience we have decided are important for this role.

How it works

• Talent Matching reviews your resume and responses to application questions to determine the extent to which your qualifications match the job requirements selected for this role. These requirements and their desired weighting are established by our recruiters in collaboration with hiring managers.
• All Talent Matching output is reviewed by our recruiting and hiring teams, who make the final decision on each application. Talent Matching does not automatically disposition any candidate or make hiring decisions.