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.

As a Backend Engineer, you will work on building the APIs that power our products and give our learners a best-in-class experience.

Our microservices infrastructure is composed of hundreds of endpoints serving hundreds of millions of requests per day. You will partner with your team members on identifying requirements and designing services that are fast, resilient, and cost-effective. You will have ownership over the entire lifecycle of your services and associated infrastructure, and ensure they are always operating well.

• As a Backend Engineer on the Data Infrastructure team, you will build tooling and infrastructure at scale to support Duolingo’s key data workflows from data visualization to A/B testing and AI.

• The enterprise application tooling team's mission is to provide tooling and engineering support for areas without traditional engineering support and for tools the entire organization leverages! We are responsible for the 2025 OKR “Pivot to tooling- and automation‑first approach for People teamwork”. In this role, you will be utilizing generative ai, automation tools, and building DIY solutions to help improve the lives of employees across the organization!

• 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

• A Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or 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

• Industry experience building high‑traffic APIs using public cloud providers

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

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.

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.

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:

$148,800 — $274,600 USD