Duolingo

Senior Engineering Manager

Duolingo$204K — $306K *
Consumer Technology
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 3+ years of experience leading and managing software engineering teams.
  • Proven track record of effectively delivering complex projects with significant business outcomes.
  • Strong analytical skills with a focus on experimental and data-driven product development.
  • Excellent communication skills for engagement across teams and clear status reporting.
  • Technical understanding to guide architectural decisions and best practices for software quality.

Responsibilities

  • Co-lead a team with a Product Manager to define and prioritize strategy for user retention features.
  • Oversee project execution from planning to implementation, ensuring system reliability and scalability.
  • Utilize data and experiments to drive product decisions and improve retention metrics.
  • Attract and develop engineering talent while fostering an inclusive team culture.
  • Set and manage engineering standards and tech debt for sustainable quality.
  • Collaborate with cross-functional teams to enhance user experiences across different platforms.
  • Define team objectives and remove obstacles to ensure successful project delivery.

Benefits

  • Equity compensation and a comprehensive benefits package.
  • Supportive work environment focused on holistic employee well-being.
  • Opportunities for professional growth through mentorship and learning.
  • Inclusive culture promoting diversity within teams.
Full Job Description
About the role...

We're hiring a Senior Engineering Manager to lead a high-impact product engineering team in the Retention area. You will co-lead a cross-functional team with a Product Manager co-lead to improve learner habit formation and long-term engagement, while owning the team's roadmap, execution, and outcomes. This role blends technical leadership, people management, and product strategy as you'll set direction for complex systems, foster an inclusive, high-performance culture, and create an environment for engineers to do impactful things. The role is based in Pittsburgh or New York.

You will...
  • Co-lead a cross-functional team with your product partner, aligning on strategy, priorities, and success metrics for retention and habit-building features.
  • Drive execution of projects from spec to implementation, experimentation/analysis, and ongoing ownership, while ensuring system reliability, scalability, and observability.
  • Use data and rapid experimentation to inform decisions; partner with internal stakeholders to design A/B tests and translate insights into product improvements that measurably impact retention KPIs.
  • Attract, grow, and retain diverse engineering talent; provide clear expectations, coaching, and career development, and build a healthy, inclusive team culture.
  • Set engineering quality standards and processes that balance speed and long-term maintainability; proactively manage tech debt, product quality, and and operational excellence.
  • Collaborate closely with product, design, research, and other engineering teams to deliver cohesive learner experiences across in-app and out-of-app surfaces (e.g., notifications, emails, widgets).
  • Define team OKRs, ruthlessly prioritize, and remove roadblocks so the team ships impactful work that moves company metrics.


You have...
  • 3+ years of experience leading, managing, and building a team of software engineers, with demonstrated ability to hire, develop, and retain talent.
  • A track record of shipping multi-engineer, multi-week+ projects with measurable business impact, balancing speed and quality.
  • Strong product instincts and comfort in highly experimental, data-driven environments; experience defining metrics and running A/B tests with analytics or data science partners.
  • Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills across engineering, product, design, and data; clear written specs and status updates.
  • Technical depth sufficient to guide architecture and implementation trade-offs, evolve quality standards, and mentor engineers on best practices.
  • The ability to work from or relocate to Pittsburgh, PA or New York, NY.


☆ Exceptional candidates will have...
  • Experience leading teams focused on retention, engagement, growth, or habit-formation features in consumer products.
  • Experience setting team OKRs and operating cadences that consistently deliver outsized impact on company-level metrics.
  • Background managing teams with broad cross-functional scope.


We post a multi-level salary range for all of our roles.

This is not inclusive of the rest of our awesome portfolio that includes equity compensation and world-class benefits. Our salary ranges are the same for all US locations. Your recruiter can share more details about the range for a specific level during the hiring process. The actual salary within the range is determined by many factors including but not limited to, skills, experience, education, and internal equity.

Salary Range:

$204,000-$306,000 USD

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

About Duolingo

Duolingo is a language-learning platform that includes a language-learning website and app, as well as a digital language proficiency assessment exam. The company was founded in 2011 by Luis von Ahn and Severin Hacker. Duolingo offers courses in over 40 languages, including Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Chinese. The platform is free to use, but users can pay for additional features. Duolingo has won numerous awards for its innovative approach to language learning.
Learn more about Duolingo
Size
400 employees
Market Cap
$2.7 billion
Industry
Founded
2011
NASDAQ

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