Senior Director of Engineering, New Subjects

The role

This leader co-runs engineering for Duolingo's expansion beyond languages into math, music, and chess, which the company treats as a major strategic wager on becoming a general learning platform. The position spans everything from prototypes to fast-growing launches and sets the investment and pivot calls across those bets. It works alongside product, design, and AI teams and manages several engineering directors.

What you would do

• Set product and technical direction for math, music, and chess, weighing near-term results against longer-term aims
• Decide when and how to extend into new subject areas with product, design, learning, and AI partners
• Oversee several engineering directors and their groups on AI content generation, bot behavior, and Unity gameplay
• Raise engineering standards for reliability, speed, developer tooling, and execution at scale
• Take a leading part in engineering hiring standards, promotion calibration, and org design
• Build a leadership pipeline able to launch ambitious products

What they asked for

• Have led consumer product engineering groups of 100+ engineers, preferably through several fast-scaling products
• Bring product judgment and have helped senior product leaders shape strategy rather than only carry it out
• Show a record of moving business metrics, including building early-stage products through major company growth
• Have built or scaled AI-driven product features and favor AI-first engineering habits
• Have run fast, experiment-heavy product organizations and managed through several tiers of leadership
• Have built inclusive, high-performing teams and made careful, sound talent decisions
• Can persuade senior executives and bring order to ambiguous, cross-team problems
• Able to work from the New York office on a four-days-in-office, one-remote schedule