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...
The Monetization Pillar focuses on Duolingo’s key business drivers—subscriptions, ads, and in-app purchases. Our goal is to build the best premium experiences for our learners while ensuring the sustainability and success of our business model. You will play an instrumental role in the strategic direction of Duolingo by developing and refining the methods that make our monetization efforts more effective and efficient. We’re seeking engineering leaders who are passionate about bottom-line business impact, and who bring fresh insights and a creative technical approach.
🧠 You will...
- Co-lead a cross-functional pod with Product and Design to define strategy, success metrics, and an execution roadmap for one of Duolingo’s Monetization teams.
- Partner with design and product to ship experiences that feel native to Duolingo: delightful, well-paced, and respectful of the learner without compromising monetization performance.
- Collaborate with data science and ML partners to design experiments, apply personalization and targeting, and translate insights into product improvements and bookings growth.
- Own planning and execution for projects that directly impact revenue; identify the right team-level metrics to optimize and protect delivery through clear milestones and risk management.
- Bring both technical and product perspectives to new ideas, enabling rapid hypothesis testing without sacrificing reliability, observability, or long-term maintainability.
- Set and uphold engineering quality standards and practices that improve reliability, scalability, and operability.
✅ You have...
- Experience leading, managing, and building a team of software engineers, with demonstrated ability to hire, develop, and retain talent.
- Direct experience working on engineering teams that build and operate monetization systems.
- A track record of owning multi-engineer, multi-week technical projects to successful outcomes in a highly experimental, data-driven environment.
- Strong product instincts and excellent written/verbal communication, with experience aligning diverse stakeholders across engineering, product, design, and analytics.
- Experience working closely with data, experimentation, or machine learning teams to inform prioritization and ship measurable impact (direct ML expertise not required).
- Demonstrated ability to raise the bar on engineering practices for reliability, scalability, and observability.
- Technical depth sufficient to guide architecture and implementation trade‑offs, evolve quality standards, and mentor engineers on best practices.
⭐ Exceptional candidates will have...
- Deep experience with ad mediation, waterfall, and bidding systems (AdMob, GAM, Open Bidding, or equivalent), including onboarding and optimizing demand partners.
- A strong track record of designing or shipping in-product ad formats and surfaces in mobile apps, with attention to UX quality and format performance.
- Experience improving ad quality and monetization through experimentation, targeting, or programmatic levers, in partnership with business teams.
- Background collaborating with sales/biz ops on direct or programmatic campaigns and translating market feedback into product improvements.
- Experience leading teams that span multiple platforms (iOS, Android, backend) and partnering on ML-powered personalization within consumer apps.
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!
Benefits: Take a peek at how we care for our employees' holistic well-being with our benefits here.
Job Alerts: Sign up for job alerts 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 [email protected].
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.
Duolingo New York, New York, USA Office
Our second largest office is located in the bustling financial district of NYC. Fun fact, Duo can often be seen at work from the city streets! If you don't know what I'm talking about, check out our viral videos on TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@duolingo?lang=en)!
Similar Jobs
What you need to know about the NYC Tech Scene
Key Facts About NYC Tech
- Number of Tech Workers: 549,200; 6% of overall workforce (2024 CompTIA survey)
- Major Tech Employers: Capgemini, Bloomberg, IBM, Spotify
- Key Industries: Artificial intelligence, Fintech
- Funding Landscape: $25.5 billion in venture capital funding in 2024 (Pitchbook)
- Notable Investors: Greycroft, Thrive Capital, Union Square Ventures, FirstMark Capital, Tiger Global Management, Tribeca Venture Partners, Insight Partners, Two Sigma Ventures
- Research Centers and Universities: Columbia University, New York University, Fordham University, CUNY, AI Now Institute, Flatiron Institute, C.N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics, NASA Space Radiation Laboratory
