Senior Engineering Manager, New Initiatives

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](https://blog.duolingo.com/tag/engineering/?utm_source=greenhouse.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=engblog_gh_091224), 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 roles** **Senior Engineering Manager, Chess:** Chess has reached **millions** of daily active learners since its launch 1 year ago – and we're just getting started! By expanding beyond language learning, Chess helps define how Duolingo brings high-quality, accessible learning to entirely new domains. As a Senior Engineering Manager on Chess, you'll lead a product engineering team responsible for **Duolingo's fastest-growing initiative**. Your team will build core gameplay experiences, guide beginners from their first move to their first matches, and drive our strategy for becoming the best place to learn chess. This role blends technical leadership, strong product intuition, and people management. You’ll partner closely with product, design, data science, and AI to define strategy, ship high-impact experiments, and help define what learning new subjects looks like at Duolingo. ##### **🧠  You will...** - Form a dynamic duo with your product manager counterpart to co-lead a cross-functional team. You’ll collaborate closely with data scientists and machine learning researchers to define goals, shape experiments, and guide technical decisions. - Provide both technical and product perspectives on new product ideas to ensure we find the fastest way to test a hypothesis. - Own the planning, execution, and success of projects that directly improve our top-line business metrics like daily active users, and identify which metrics to optimize for at the team level. - Set clear expectations around engineering quality and promote practices that enhance code quality, scalability, and maintainability. - Identify and drive technical initiatives that improve the reliability, timeliness, and efficacy of notification delivery. ##### **✅  You have...** - Developed your team, deeply understanding each engineer’s strengths and career goals, and proactively providing mentorship and stretch opportunities to help them grow their impact. - Set clear expectations and hold a high bar for performance, regularly providing candid feedback, addressing challenges decisively, and maintaining a supportive environment where engineers feel valued, engaged, and empowered. - Provided clarity and alignment, transparently communicating the “why” behind decisions, thoughtfully guiding your team through changes, and ensuring everyone understands their role in achieving team and company goals. ##### **⭐  Exceptional candidates will have...** - 2+ years of experience leading, managing, and building a team of software engineers. - 5+ years in software development focused on content or animation creation. - Have a record of owning the execution of successful technical projects that span multiple engineers over multiple weeks. - Strong written and verbal communication skills. * * * **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: $200,000—$300,000 USD Take a peek at how we care for our employees' holistic well-being with our benefits [here](https://careers.duolingo.com/#benefits). 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]](mailto:[email protected]). 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. By applying for this position your data will be processed as per the [Duolingo Applicant Privacy Notice](https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTX9GKeRMOMA9Vtm0vfGibrYPYz8ysl0Dg8KSXgj_PxeT5ChsdnNZZWtpxu4t7xillTPGnngnKCjIbV/pub). 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. Sign up for job alerts [here](http://my.greenhouse.io/users/sign_in?job_board=duolingo).