Platform Engineer II

Duolingo; New York, Northern (NY, KY); Hybrid; USD 153,000 - 207,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Accommodations

Equity compensation

Job summary

Duolingo is seeking a Platform Engineer on the Compute team to improve how engineers build and run services, ensuring the compute platform is reliable at scale for our learners and fellow Duo engineers.

You will work on core compute primitives powered by Kubernetes across regions and clouds, evolve GitOps deployment patterns, and define SLOs with dashboards and on-call processes to keep the platform dependable. Experience with Terraform, CloudFormation, and CI/CD tools is valued.

Qualifications

• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to ship pragmatic solutions in production.
• Experience with distributed systems concepts (networking, service-to-service communication, caching).
• Experience on production systems in industry roles, internships or open-source.
• Experience with CI/CD tools and infrastructure management tools.
• Clear written and verbal communication, documentation, and cross-team collaboration.
• Familiarity with Linux system administration and automation.

Responsibilities

• Build and operate core compute primitives powering production workloads on Kubernetes across regions and clouds.
• Improve delivery pipelines by evolving GitOps and deployment patterns for safer, faster rollouts.
• Raise the operational bar with SLOs, dashboards, alerts, runbooks, and on-call/incident response.
• Enable self-service by turning platform capabilities into reusable abstractions.

Skills

Strong problem-solving

Production systems experience

Written and verbal communication

Linux administration

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Kubernetes

GitOps

Terraform

CloudFormation

Jenkins

Argo CD

GitHub Actions

Istio mTLS

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...

As a Platform Engineer on the Compute team, you’ll improve how engineers build and run services, helping ensure our compute platform is reliable at scale for our learners and fellow Duo engineers.

The Compute team builds and operates the core compute platform that powers our applications. We build paved roads (self-service platform primitives, templates, and tooling) and we operate them so product engineers can focus on shipping features with confidence.

• Build and operate core compute primitives that power production workloads based on Kubernetes, across different regions and cloud providers.
• Improve the delivery pipeline from commit to production by evolving our GitOps and deployment patterns, making rollouts safer and faster.
• Raise the operational bar: define SLOs, build dashboards/alerts, write runbooks, and participate in on-call/incident response to keep the platform dependable.
• Enable effective self-service by turning platform capabilities into reusable abstractions.

You have...

• Strong problem-solving skills and experience delivering and shipping pragmatic solutions in production environments.
• Experience with distributed systems fundamentals (networking, service-to-service communication, failure modes, caching/storage concepts).
• Experience working on production systems (through industry roles, internships, or substantial open-source work).
• Experience with one or more CI/CD tools (Jenkins, Argo CD, GitHub Actions) and infrastructure management tools (Terraform, CloudFormation)
• Clear written and verbal communication skills—comfortable writing docs/runbooks and collaborating across teams.
• Functional knowledge of Linux system administration and automation

Exceptional candidates will have...

• A Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, related technical field, or equivalent practical experience
• Experience managing a production infrastructure on AWS, Google Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, or Azure.
• Exposure to multi-cluster or multi-region architectures and the operational patterns that make them reliable.
• Experience with service mesh / zero-trust networking patterns (e.g., Istio mTLS, traffic management, authorization policies).

Benefits:

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

Accommodations: 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 [e-mail] .

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.

Salary Range: $153,000 — $207,000 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.

The offered salary is dependent upon several factors, including work experience, skills, and internal peer comparisons. The posted range is subject to change in the future. For this role, base salary is supplemented by equity compensation. We encourage you to talk with your recruiter for more information related to compensation for this role!