Senior Software Engineer, Backend

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.

We’re looking for backend engineers who have experience building and operating reliable, scalable systems. Your background may be in product engineering, infrastructure, platform engineering, or a combination of these. What matters most is strong backend fundamentals, sound systems thinking, and the ability to take ownership of complex technical problems from design through production.

Below you can find more information about the team we're hiring for:

Language Learning:

The Language Learning Pillar owns the core learning experience on Duolingo — the lessons and immersive experiences where language learners spend a majority of their time in the app. Our goal is to make these sessions as effective and engaging as possible by continuously improving how we teach through new exercise types, smarter practice of skills, better scaffolding and personalization to help learners build foundational skills in a new language. As an engineering manager in this pillar, you'll lead a team of engineers working on high-impact, cross-functional problems at the intersection of engineering, product, and pedagogy. We're looking for leaders who are passionate about improving how people learn, and who bring strong technical judgment along with the people-management skills to build a high-performing, collaborative team culture.

Platform:

The Platform Pillar ensures that Duolingo’s infrastructure, tools, and AI systems support our mission of delivering a seamless and personalized learning experience. This Pillar powers the technical backbone of our app and enables all other Pillars to thrive.

Growth:

Growth is core to our mission at Duolingo; helping users find and build a habit with language learning is tied to our ability to make the product fun and engaging every single day. We work on a wide variety of features that build and strengthen habits, like streaks, quests, leaderboards, notifications, and are inventing new features to address user needs.

New Subjects:

Over the last few years, Duolingo has expanded beyond language learning into entirely new subjects: Math, Music, and Chess. These products reach millions of daily active users, are growing quickly, and represent a CEO-level bet that Duolingo can become a platform for learning anything. The objective is to expand Duolingo by doing for new subjects what we have done for language.

🧠 You will...

• Collaborate on software projects with product design and backend aspects
• Develop, release, and maintain backend services and/or infrastructure
• Lead individual project priorities, milestones, and ensure we're always shipping

✅ You have...

• A Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related technical field
• Strong competencies in data structures, algorithms, and software design
• Experience programming in Java, Python, or Kotlin
• Solid understanding of one or more database technologies

⭐ Exceptional candidates will have...

• Industry experience building high-traffic APIs using public cloud providers
• Experience with industry observability technology, such as OpenTelemetry, Grafana, Prometheus, or DataDog.

The offered salary is dependent upon several factors, including work experience, skills, and internal peer comparisons. The posted range is subject to change in the future. For this role, base salary is supplemented by equity compensation. We encourage you to talk with your recruiter for more information related to compensation for this role!

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

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Accommodations: 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 accommodations@duolingo.com.

Equal Employment Opportunity: 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.

Fraud Warning: 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.

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