Senior Engineering Manager, Monetization

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

As a Senior Engineering Manager in Monetization, you’ll lead a product engineering team responsible for core revenue-generating experiences, including subscription packaging, advertising, and ML-powered personalization and targeting. Your team will build systems that help learners understand the value of Duolingo’s offerings, surface the right experiences at the right time, and fund our mission, while keeping the product playful, transparent, and learner-first.

This role blends technical leadership, strong product intuition, and people management. You’ll partner closely with product, design, data science, and machine learning to define strategy, ship high-quality systems, and learn through continuous experimentation. You’ll set direction for complex, high-impact systems and create an environment where engineers do the best work of their careers.

:brain:  You will...

• Form a tight partnership with your product manager to co-lead a cross-functional team, aligning on strategy, priorities, and success metrics.
• Guide your team building and iterating on subscription and ad experiences that are intuitive, scalable, and measurable.
• Collaborate with data scientists and machine learning partners to design experiments, apply personalization or targeting techniques, and translate insights into product improvements.
• Own the planning and execution of projects that directly impact top-line metrics like revenue, and identify which metrics to optimize for at the team level.
• Bring both technical and product perspectives to new ideas, helping your team identify the fastest and most effective ways to test hypotheses.
• Set a high bar for engineering quality, promoting practices that improve reliability, scalability, observability, and long-term maintainability.
• Develop 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.
• Provide 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.

:check:  You 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.
• A track record of owning the execution of successful technical projects that span multiple engineers over multiple weeks.
• Strong product instincts and comfort working in highly experimental, data-driven environments.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, and experience aligning diverse sets of stakeholders
• Experience working closely with data, experimentation, or machine learning teams (direct ML expertise not required).