Head of AI and Machine Learning

Our mission at Duolingo is to develop the best education in the world and make it universally available. But we’ve got more left to do — and that's where you come in!

Duolingo is the most popular language-learning application in the world, with over 500 million users and over half a billion exercises completed daily. Beyond our core learning product, we have also entered into literacy with Duolingo ABC and English proficiency testing with the Duolingo English Test.

We are passionate about educating our users, making fact-based decisions, and finding innovative solutions to complex problems. We offer meaningful work, limitless learning opportunities, and collaboration with world-class minds. Come brighten your life and over half a billion more!

As Head of AI and Machine Learning at Duolingo, you will have the opportunity to grow as a researcher and to steer the company’s overall artificial intelligence efforts, creating a more formal path for ML experimentation, development, and product realization. By collaborating with other leaders in engineering, product, learning, and design, you will align product needs with new areas of research and innovation that support ML efforts across the company, both in the near-term and long-term.

You Will...

• Develop the vision and corresponding strategy for AI and ML at Duolingo.
• Build a shared team of ML researchers and engineers through effective hiring, coaching, mentoring, and hands-on career development, with a focus on cultivating talent and instilling data-driven values in a fast-paced environment.
• Collaborate with engineering, product, design, learning, assessment, and business leaders to ensure that work is aligned with Duolingo’s mission and goals.
• Set and own the strategy and implementation for multiple areas of focus, including NLP, speech technology, personalization, dialog systems, anomaly detection, forecasting, and so on; balancing short- and long-term priorities against various business needs.

You Have...

• PhD (or equivalent industry experience) in computer science or a related field.
• 10+ years of professional experience as a research or engineering leader.
• Experience with technical innovation in cross-functional, engineering-oriented environments.
• Experience growing and developing organizations and teams.
• Excellent presentation, interpersonal, and critical thinking skills.
• Ability to travel to Pittsburgh, PA at least once per quarter.

Exceptional Candidates Will Have...

• Experience in fast-growing, consumer-facing, data-driven startups, ideally mobile app based.
• Experience with ideation and innovation of technology at scale, successfully producing intelligent software products and features within strict timelines.
• A desire to keep up with the field by attending or publishing at relevant conferences (ICML, NeurIPS, ACL, EMNLP, KDD, AAAI, ICLR, CVPR, etc.)

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 your recruiter.

Because Duolingo intends to require all employees to return to work from an office, all employees will need to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and have received any booster doses as recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to remain employed unless they have an exemption to vaccination pursuant to a required reasonable accommodation. This is so that our employees feel safe in the office.

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