Senior Director of Engineering, New Subjects

Duolingo
New York
Workplace: HybridFull timeFunction: Executive & General ManagementSkills: ["Leadership","Strategy","Communication","Collaboration","Mentorship"]

Lead the New Subjects pillar (Math, Music, Chess) at Duolingo, building and scaling products from early stages to high-growth initiatives. Partner with Product, Design, Learning and AI to shape strategy, allocate engineering resources, and drive measurable business impact. Manage multiple directors, tackle AI-first features and Unity gameplay, and ensure high operational excellence in a hybrid New York–based team.

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FursaFursa
Duolingo
Duolingo
2 months ago

Senior Director of Engineering, New Subjects

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Source: Company careers pageValidated by: Fursa AI
Last checked: 9 hours agoStatus: Live

Job Summary

Lead the New Subjects pillar (Math, Music, Chess) at Duolingo, building and scaling products from early stages to high-growth initiatives. Partner with Product, Design, Learning and AI to shape strategy, allocate engineering resources, and drive measurable business impact. Manage multiple directors, tackle AI-first features and Unity gameplay, and ensure high operational excellence in a hybrid New York–based team.
Location: New York
Workplace: Hybrid
Employment Type: Full time
Job Function: Executive & General Management
Seniority: Sr. Director level

Key Responsibilities

  • •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 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.

Key Requirements

  • •Experience leading large-scale consumer product engineering organizations (100+ engineers).
  • •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 AI-first engineering cultures.
  • •Deep experience building and scaling high-velocity, experiment-driven product organizations, leading through multiple layers of leadership (senior directors, directors, EMs).
Experience:EdtechAILLMEducation
Skills:LeadershipStrategyCommunicationCollaborationMentorship
Languages:English
Tech Stack:AILLMUnityPythonMLData analytics

Company Brief

Duolingo
Duolingo develops a gamified language-learning platform offering courses, practice exercises, and assessment tools for learners worldwide via web and mobile apps, using adaptive algorithms and motivational features to drive engagement and retention.
Industry: EdTech
Company Size: Enterprise (1,001+ employees)
Revenue: USD 500M to 1B
Growth: Public Company
Valuation: Public Company (Market Cap in USD)
Funding: IPO / Publicly Listed
Headquarters: Pittsburgh, United States
Founded: 2011
Glassdoor
Glassdoor: 4.2
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