Director of Learning Design, Immersive Language Learning

Director of Learning Design, Immersive Language Learning

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 educating our users, experimenting with big ideas, making fact‑based decisions, and finding innovative solutions to complex problems. You’ll have limitless learning opportunities and daily collaborations with world‑class minds — while doing work that’s both meaningful and fun.

Join our life‑changing mission to develop education for our half a billion (and growing!) learners around the world. Read our blog to learn more.

As Director of Learning Design for Immersive Language Learning, you will be the pedagogical and creative lead for Duolingo’s long‑form, narrative, and audio‑first experiences – Stories, Duo Radio, Adventures, and future immersive formats. You’ll set the vision for how compelling storytelling, design, and audio can accelerate real‑world language gains, and you’ll turn that vision into products millions love. You’ll lead a multidisciplinary team of learning designers and partner closely with product leadership to ship delightful, effective, and distinctly Duolingo experiences at global scale.

This job is based in Pittsburgh or New York.

• Ship effective immersive learning at scale: partner with Product, Design, and Engineering to translate pedagogy into creative storytelling experiences that build listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills.
• Lead and develop a world‑class team of learning designers, leveling up their craft, velocity, and effectiveness.
• Leverage AI thoughtfully: oversee human‑in‑the‑loop workflows to generate high‑quality learning content where Duolingo characters come to life and our distinctive brand voice is reflected.
• Establish content quality systems (guidelines, rubrics, review workflows) that ensure linguistic accuracy, high creative bar, cohesive storytelling, difficulty calibration, and high quality across languages.
• Drive an experiment‑led practice: foster an outcome‑focused culture, confirm hypotheses via A/B tests, align on success metrics, and assist with analyzing learning and engagement impact.
• Explore what’s next: develop and validate roadmaps for novel immersive experiences that extend Duolingo’s impact.

• Depth in language learning design: typically 10+ years designing consumer language learning products with proven impact at scale.
• Creative instincts and taste: ability to shape narrative in immersive experiences and give specific, actionable creative feedback.
• People leadership: 5+ years leading multi‑disciplinary teams; experience managing managers and setting high bars for craft and delivery.
• Product sense: intuition for simple, lovable mobile experiences and how story, pacing, and mechanics can drive motivation.
• Operational rigor: proficiency in large‑scale content operations, QA processes, and tooling to maintain quality across multiple languages; ideally, experience with human‑in‑the‑loop AI workflows.
• Outstanding communication: clear, kind, and persuasive across audiences, including executive and cross‑functional.

• Graduate degree in Education, HCI, Applied Linguistics, SLA, TESOL, Linguistics, Learning Science, Cognitive Science, or a relevant language field.
• Experience with storytelling, interactive fiction/branching narratives, or game narrative design, especially for educational purposes.
• Proficiency in one or more languages beyond English and comfort reviewing content across multiple languages.

USD $189,600 – $284,400.

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.

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

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.

• Seniority level:
  Director
• Employment type:
  
  Full‑time
• Job function:
  Human Resources
• Industry: Software Development